Do you agree with Birman? If yes, why do you think browsers are generally slow today?
Not really, no. Tabs open up basically instantly on the computer I'm typing this with. Doesn't matter much which browser I'm using either. I'm almost always limited either by the bandwidth of my internet connection or the slowness of the database on the other end of the line. I hear people bitching about this browser or that one being "slow" and I frankly have no idea what they are talking about. If you have an even vaguely recently built computer with reasonable hardware then it is a non problem. I also see comparisons between the browsers which claim this one or that one is faster and I simply don't see any meaningful difference. The only difference between them to me is the user interface and what bugs I run into. If there are speed differences they are simply too small for me to care.
Now he did say "hundreds of tabs" which is probably the root of the problem. My guess is that he's overtaxing his computer and running out of RAM. If you have hundreds of tabs open then you are Doing It Wrong.
I have a 2012 vintage Mac Mini and it runs just fine. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, doesn't matter. I'm typing this on a PC with a Intel i5 chip and an adequate amount of RAM and it's fine no matter what browser I use. I mostly use Firefox but I'm pretty agnostic about which browser to use as long as it works and I can block ads and trackers adequately. So no I don't think there is a problem with browser speed as a general proposition. I do think people can do stupid things that slow down browsers significantly.
Close to a billion dollars in tech support so they can run an enterprise with a proposed budget of 580 billion dollars
You are not comparing equal time spans. Microsoft is NOT getting a billion dollars per year. It's a billion dollar total across the duration of the contract. That could be a decade or more. The $580B number is per year for the Defense Department budget.
Per TFA: "Microsoft has been awarded a non-competitive, firm-fixed price, single award, indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity contract for Microsoft Enterprise Technical Support Services,” the release stated on Tuesday. “The total cumulative value of the contract is $927,000,000.”
It would have to be an extremely compelling "experience" at an even more compelling price point to get any traction.
Compared to the "experience" offered on most TVs, home theater receivers and blu ray devices that is a pretty low bar to clear. I have a smart TV, Apple TV, Roku, and blu-ray and all of their streaming experiences are pretty much terrible.
I'm also still waiting for someone to have a well designed stateful universal remote that actually knows what state the device it is controlling is. Virtually all remotes currently are one way remotes that have to guess at what the device they are controlling is doing. I have a Logitech Harmony and the fact that it is stateless is more than a little annoying. I'm constantly fixing things when it turns off a device that was supposed to be on (or vice-versa).
Several reasons. 1) He's an asshole and an easy target. 2) Every president gets both too much credit and too much blame. Trump will be no exception. 3) Trump has said some terrifying and ignorant and irresponsible shit in regards to nuclear weapons which is relevant to this discussion.
He wasn't even elected or running when they started the development on this project.
No but he's the guy who got elected and so his actions and opinions now matter.
I do not trust Google or anybody to decide what is true or false regardless of how demonstrably true or false it may be.
Really? You don't trust anybody about anything? Sorry my friend but you aren't that smart and don't have enough time to verify everything yourself. Nobody is asking you to believe everything you read, even from sources likely to be credible. But you can't verify everything yourself even if you wanted to.
Yes, that could mean I have to wade through some information that ends up being false but as a thinking human being I am armed to deal with that.
I very much doubt that you are more exceptional in that regard than the rest of us. And most people are routinely pretty poor dealing with falsehoods and bad or missing data. Religion wouldn't exist if they were.
Couldn't possibly be more than one right answers, right?
It's not about answers, it's about data. If you can explain the utility of false data then you might have a point.
Should of at least had an power port and not tie up of the data ports for it.
I disagree that that is a problem. I don't want a special power cord. Having everything use the same type of cord is actually an awesome idea. But I think Apple got a little too eager to convert everyone. A transition period would have been helpful.
Search engines shouldn't give a shit what they are indexing
No but the people who design the algorithms definitely should. A search engine that returns false, misleading, or harmful results is worse than useless. Every search algorithm is simply a choice made by people about what to search for. If you want false "information" that's up to you but I want actual facts, not some asshole's version of truthiness.
Short of actual malicious websites that try to break your computer/device, just index and provide results. I do not EVER and will not EVER need a "responsible" party to get in between me and information, right or wrong.
Bullshit. You have responsible parties between you and information all the time. Scientists tell you how the world works. Engineers give you information about how to apply science to real problems. Journalists inform you of social events. All of them try to filter the facts from the rubbish. You aren't smart enough to make sense of it all yourself. Neither am I. We depend on other people for information all the time and anyone who doesn't insist on high quality factual information is an idiot.
I'm sad so many people disagree with that, but if they want to only view whitewashed information, then that is there choice.
An algorithm is just a hardcoded human choice. Apparently that fact never occurred to you. You aren't getting some version of reality unencumbered by human choice. Not ever.
But fuck you and anyone else who wants to make that choice for me.
How sweet. Keep living in your delusion that you don't depend on anyone else's choices.
Google should just shut up, and continue to serve pages according to some automated relevancy criteria. In particular, they should leave politics, beliefs and such emotionally loaded criteria out of the algorithm.
Why? So some bigoted blowhard can warp those search criteria to propagate a pack of lies about a genocide? A search engine that returns nothing but falsehoods is worse than useless. It can actually be actively harmful.
It's a VERY slippery slope.
Spare me. The slippery slope argument is almost always complete nonsense. I could make the same argument in reverse that Google is supporting bigoted speech by NOT fixing their search algorithm. Why should we believe that act is not intentional? Even inaction is still an action in this case. Failing to act means they find the current outcome acceptable. That's just as slippery a slope as your proposed one.
You the reader must take responsibility for deciding what is real and what isn't on the internets.
People are incredibly bad at doing this. If you need an example I refer you to The Bible. People have been mistaking that tome of mostly fictional stories as reality for centuries. You think they are going to stop being credulous just because somebody tells them a tall tale on the internet? Not likely.
Sometimes we need a responsible party to stand up and tell the facts. No reason Google can't serve that role in a case like this. Arguably it would be irresponsible for them not to insist that their search engine provide actual true facts instead of made up bigotry.
I suppose it doesn't instantly make you a neo-nazi, you could just be brain dead, or you might be 10 years old and hadn't read anything on it yet. I can't think of any other possibilities.
It's happened routinely. Apple has made quite a few computers that could properly described as great - at least for their time. Some even fairly recently. They've got the ability to do it but their attention has been pointed at the mobile market for a while now and I think the Macs haven't gotten adequate management attention.
Graphite G4, maybe? That really ticked all the boxes in terms of great performance, a beautiful case, and assloads of I/O and expandability
That's a very narrow definition of what makes a great computer. I would argue that great computers come in many forms and the greatest of them are ones that change markets. Apple has had more than a few of those. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I thought the Graphite G4 liked a bit like a plastic toy but that's just my personal tastes talking. Obviously it spoke to you. Expandability can be nice but if you never use it then it is wasteful - and most people will never use it. To some extent what makes a great computer is judged by sales. A great computer is one that strongly fits what people want from it and are willing to actually buy.
The trend comes from the fact that PC sales have plummeted, globally.
Even if the PC market wasn't down, Apple still would make more money from iPhones than Macintoshes. Mac's account for something like 10-15% of Apple revenues. Nothing to sneeze at but no where close to the 50%+ they get from the iPhone.
Smart Phones, and Tablets are what the non tech buyer are favoring.
Don't kid yourself. EVERYBODY is buying those including the techies.
You guys don't know what you are talking about. The current trip price is $21.22 from the airport to the strip.
Uber prices fluctuate. It's quite possible a $7 fare was what was charged for that particular trip. I merely took his numbers and pointed out that his assumptions about profitability were unrealistic.
So based on your numbers it would be $21.22/trip * 6 trips which is $126/hr.
It isn't $126/hour unless you make some very unrealistic assumptions and there is plenty of data out there indicating that Uber drivers don't make anywhere near that kind of money. You apparently didn't pay attention to that. I'm not saying someone can't make a living as an Uber driver. Just that they probably aren't going to get rich doing it. Uber drivers make $20-$25/hour. Not bad but that is around $40-50K/year and no where close to the quarter million you are implying. And Uber doesn't pay for car maintenance, car payments, fuel, etc so the real number is going to be considerably less.
That is more than YOU make, even after taking out expenses.
You have no idea what I make. I can assure you that I make more than an Uber driver. If I didn't I would be an Uber driver.
Uber also pays bonuses based on number of trips. Uber drivers aren't stupid. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable.
Being profitable doesn't mean they are making a killing.
How much do we want to bet that there is a vocal contingent within Apple who aren't satisfied with Apple's drive to eliminate features on their products?
I don't actually have a problem with the fact that they went to USB-C or removed the function keys. Those are actually sensible things to do in principle. What is annoying is how they went about it and the lack of consideration for users real world needs. Removing the function keys is fine if you have something better but it's not clear that they do. Going to USB-C is fine but they didn't consider things like a replacement for Magsafe or the fact that maybe having at least one old school USB port might be useful to many people. I like the goal of reducing the number of ports to the minimum possible number very much but the path there should reflect the reality of the world we live in.
Actually the thing that annoys me the most about their laptops is the lack of a proper delete key meaning a key that will delete the character to the right of the cursor when pressed. What they call a delete key is what everyone else calls backspace and they don't have a delete key on their laptop keyboards. One has to push a function key combination to do that and that is more than a little irritating to me.
"Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops," Cook wrote. "If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that."
It means nothing until they back it up with real products that people can buy. Apple is clearly capable of making great desktop computers but they have kind of taken their eye off the ball lately since most of their revenue comes from the iPhone. I haven't seen a lot of innovation from Apple in the PC market for a while now and I'd say they've had more misses than hits. I think their desktop PCs are fine but not everything they could be.
isn't it like 10 minutes or less from the strip to the airport? say 5 round trips an hour at $14 each round trip. $7 there and back for different people is $70 an hour before expenses. not too bad.
It's something like 10 minutes each way. I've taken the ride from the Strip to McCarran airport. That would be 3 round trips per hour presuming there is zero time waiting between trips, which is an unrealistic assumption. It's also unrealistic to assume there would be a paying fare for every leg of those trips. So in an unrealistic best case scenario you are talking about $42/hour ($7/trip * 6 trips). More realistically it would probably be closer to half that. S20/hour is roughly $40K/year assuming an 8 hour work day and 240 working days per year. Then take off the cost of fuel, insurance, maintenance, taxes, Uber's cut of the fare, etc and you're probably lucky to clear $20K/year for what really is kind of a shitty and boring job.
Hogwash. They are a taxi service. Nothing more, nothing less. Their money comes from taxi fares so that is what they are. They make good use of tech but that doesn't make them a tech company, it makes them a tech savvy taxi company.
They are a lobbying company.
That might have some validity if they actually received money from lobbying. Any lobbying they do is to facilitate their business model but it isn't the core of what they do. Anyway mostly they just enter a market and completely ignore whatever laws are there rather than lobbying to get them changed into their favor. That's not lobbying unless you have a very twisted definition of the term.
It is the very definition of an abstraction layer. USPS won't allow delivery to a post office box so they substitute the street address of the po box and pretend it is a "street address" when it is not. A FAR simpler solution would have been to simply allow third parties to deliver to PO boxes and not waste everyone's time with street addresses that really aren't street addresses. So they added a layer of complexity to "solve" a problem that they created instead of eliminating the actual root cause of the problem.
If you just use the post office for package delivery, you know what happens if they can't deliver it into your hands? It goes back to your local post office, and they hold it for you-
That is simply not true as a general proposition. I get packages left on my porch by USPS on a routine basis if they don't fit in my mail box. And there is no meaningful difference between putting a package in an unlocked mailbox and putting it on your porch. Furthermore I'm not particularly worried about package theft where I live so if I'm fine with it being left there why is that a problem?
UPS sucks. They don't maintain anything like the network of post offices managed by USPS, and instead they like to gamble with the safety of your packages in ways the post office simply won't.
UPS will do exactly what they are paid to do. Same with FedEx. If the person sending the package tells them to leave it on the porch then that is what they do. If they pay them to hand it to a specific person then that is what they do. It's up to you. If you are too cheap to pay for signed delivery then the risk is on you if the package gets lost.
Blaiming the USPS for being "less efficient" is crazy: they *do more* for you.
If they were more efficient with packages there would be no need for companies like UPS and FedEx. I have literally shipped tens of thousands of packages though companies I've owned and worked in over the years. I've used pretty much every major package courier (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL etc) plus a large number of LTL carriers. USPS is BY FAR the biggest pain in the ass to do business with, has the most clumsy handling procedures, operates the slowest, their software sucks (and is usually third party anyway), and for packages above a few pounds are routinely among the more expensive options if you ship any kind of volume at all. They certainly don't do more for me - not for anything I actually need. They have a bunch of needlessly complicated postage options which add cost and slow things down. I've NEVER seen a postal worker in a hurry. If I need a package delivered quickly (i.e. tomorrow), USPS is a terrible option. Stand in line at the post office? I've had to wait 20 minutes for them to deal with a 5 person line and nobody ahead of me was doing anything complicated or unusual. That is just absurd.
She was able to track the package online, but only when the package arrived at a USPS facility. UPS and FedEX scan the packages when they arrive and depart any facility.
That's why USPS tracking is basically useless. Tracking updates should happen any time someone handles the package. USPS doens't have the infrastructure to bother. Technically they have "tracking" but it's pretty much worthless except for proof of delivery.
No, UPS and FedEx aren't always cheaper.
No not always but pretty routinely. And you tend to get what you pay for.
Many post office offer street addressing as an option for your PO box.
So instead of simply dropping the prohibition against delivering packages to a PO box, USPS put an additional layer of abstraction on the problem with a quasi-fake street address that points to a post office box. This is why USPS sucks. They rarely do anything the easy or efficient way.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you agree with Birman? If yes, why do you think browsers are generally slow today?
Not really, no. Tabs open up basically instantly on the computer I'm typing this with. Doesn't matter much which browser I'm using either. I'm almost always limited either by the bandwidth of my internet connection or the slowness of the database on the other end of the line. I hear people bitching about this browser or that one being "slow" and I frankly have no idea what they are talking about. If you have an even vaguely recently built computer with reasonable hardware then it is a non problem. I also see comparisons between the browsers which claim this one or that one is faster and I simply don't see any meaningful difference. The only difference between them to me is the user interface and what bugs I run into. If there are speed differences they are simply too small for me to care.
Now he did say "hundreds of tabs" which is probably the root of the problem. My guess is that he's overtaxing his computer and running out of RAM. If you have hundreds of tabs open then you are Doing It Wrong.
I have a 2012 vintage Mac Mini and it runs just fine. Safari, Firefox, Chrome, doesn't matter. I'm typing this on a PC with a Intel i5 chip and an adequate amount of RAM and it's fine no matter what browser I use. I mostly use Firefox but I'm pretty agnostic about which browser to use as long as it works and I can block ads and trackers adequately. So no I don't think there is a problem with browser speed as a general proposition. I do think people can do stupid things that slow down browsers significantly.
... and then have people pay you lots of money to troubleshoot their issues.
There is an old saying in consulting that if you can't be a part of the solution then there is a lot of money to be made in prolonging the problem.
Close to a billion dollars in tech support so they can run an enterprise with a proposed budget of 580 billion dollars
You are not comparing equal time spans. Microsoft is NOT getting a billion dollars per year. It's a billion dollar total across the duration of the contract. That could be a decade or more. The $580B number is per year for the Defense Department budget.
Per TFA: "Microsoft has been awarded a non-competitive, firm-fixed price, single award, indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity contract for Microsoft Enterprise Technical Support Services,” the release stated on Tuesday. “The total cumulative value of the contract is $927,000,000.”
It would have to be an extremely compelling "experience" at an even more compelling price point to get any traction.
Compared to the "experience" offered on most TVs, home theater receivers and blu ray devices that is a pretty low bar to clear. I have a smart TV, Apple TV, Roku, and blu-ray and all of their streaming experiences are pretty much terrible.
I'm also still waiting for someone to have a well designed stateful universal remote that actually knows what state the device it is controlling is. Virtually all remotes currently are one way remotes that have to guess at what the device they are controlling is doing. I have a Logitech Harmony and the fact that it is stateless is more than a little annoying. I'm constantly fixing things when it turns off a device that was supposed to be on (or vice-versa).
Why are people blaming everything on Trump?
Several reasons. 1) He's an asshole and an easy target. 2) Every president gets both too much credit and too much blame. Trump will be no exception. 3) Trump has said some terrifying and ignorant and irresponsible shit in regards to nuclear weapons which is relevant to this discussion.
He wasn't even elected or running when they started the development on this project.
No but he's the guy who got elected and so his actions and opinions now matter.
I do not trust Google or anybody to decide what is true or false regardless of how demonstrably true or false it may be.
Really? You don't trust anybody about anything? Sorry my friend but you aren't that smart and don't have enough time to verify everything yourself. Nobody is asking you to believe everything you read, even from sources likely to be credible. But you can't verify everything yourself even if you wanted to.
Yes, that could mean I have to wade through some information that ends up being false but as a thinking human being I am armed to deal with that.
I very much doubt that you are more exceptional in that regard than the rest of us. And most people are routinely pretty poor dealing with falsehoods and bad or missing data. Religion wouldn't exist if they were.
Couldn't possibly be more than one right answers, right?
It's not about answers, it's about data. If you can explain the utility of false data then you might have a point.
Should of at least had an power port and not tie up of the data ports for it.
I disagree that that is a problem. I don't want a special power cord. Having everything use the same type of cord is actually an awesome idea. But I think Apple got a little too eager to convert everyone. A transition period would have been helpful.
Search engines shouldn't give a shit what they are indexing
No but the people who design the algorithms definitely should. A search engine that returns false, misleading, or harmful results is worse than useless. Every search algorithm is simply a choice made by people about what to search for. If you want false "information" that's up to you but I want actual facts, not some asshole's version of truthiness.
Short of actual malicious websites that try to break your computer/device, just index and provide results. I do not EVER and will not EVER need a "responsible" party to get in between me and information, right or wrong.
Bullshit. You have responsible parties between you and information all the time. Scientists tell you how the world works. Engineers give you information about how to apply science to real problems. Journalists inform you of social events. All of them try to filter the facts from the rubbish. You aren't smart enough to make sense of it all yourself. Neither am I. We depend on other people for information all the time and anyone who doesn't insist on high quality factual information is an idiot.
I'm sad so many people disagree with that, but if they want to only view whitewashed information, then that is there choice.
An algorithm is just a hardcoded human choice. Apparently that fact never occurred to you. You aren't getting some version of reality unencumbered by human choice. Not ever.
But fuck you and anyone else who wants to make that choice for me.
How sweet. Keep living in your delusion that you don't depend on anyone else's choices.
Google should just shut up, and continue to serve pages according to some automated relevancy criteria. In particular, they should leave politics, beliefs and such emotionally loaded criteria out of the algorithm.
Why? So some bigoted blowhard can warp those search criteria to propagate a pack of lies about a genocide? A search engine that returns nothing but falsehoods is worse than useless. It can actually be actively harmful.
It's a VERY slippery slope.
Spare me. The slippery slope argument is almost always complete nonsense. I could make the same argument in reverse that Google is supporting bigoted speech by NOT fixing their search algorithm. Why should we believe that act is not intentional? Even inaction is still an action in this case. Failing to act means they find the current outcome acceptable. That's just as slippery a slope as your proposed one.
You the reader must take responsibility for deciding what is real and what isn't on the internets.
People are incredibly bad at doing this. If you need an example I refer you to The Bible. People have been mistaking that tome of mostly fictional stories as reality for centuries. You think they are going to stop being credulous just because somebody tells them a tall tale on the internet? Not likely.
Sometimes we need a responsible party to stand up and tell the facts. No reason Google can't serve that role in a case like this. Arguably it would be irresponsible for them not to insist that their search engine provide actual true facts instead of made up bigotry.
I suppose it doesn't instantly make you a neo-nazi, you could just be brain dead, or you might be 10 years old and hadn't read anything on it yet. I can't think of any other possibilities.
Trump supporter
I'm trying to think of when that last happened.
It's happened routinely. Apple has made quite a few computers that could properly described as great - at least for their time. Some even fairly recently. They've got the ability to do it but their attention has been pointed at the mobile market for a while now and I think the Macs haven't gotten adequate management attention.
Graphite G4, maybe? That really ticked all the boxes in terms of great performance, a beautiful case, and assloads of I/O and expandability
That's a very narrow definition of what makes a great computer. I would argue that great computers come in many forms and the greatest of them are ones that change markets. Apple has had more than a few of those. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I thought the Graphite G4 liked a bit like a plastic toy but that's just my personal tastes talking. Obviously it spoke to you. Expandability can be nice but if you never use it then it is wasteful - and most people will never use it. To some extent what makes a great computer is judged by sales. A great computer is one that strongly fits what people want from it and are willing to actually buy.
The trend comes from the fact that PC sales have plummeted, globally.
Even if the PC market wasn't down, Apple still would make more money from iPhones than Macintoshes. Mac's account for something like 10-15% of Apple revenues. Nothing to sneeze at but no where close to the 50%+ they get from the iPhone.
Smart Phones, and Tablets are what the non tech buyer are favoring.
Don't kid yourself. EVERYBODY is buying those including the techies.
You guys don't know what you are talking about. The current trip price is $21.22 from the airport to the strip.
Uber prices fluctuate. It's quite possible a $7 fare was what was charged for that particular trip. I merely took his numbers and pointed out that his assumptions about profitability were unrealistic.
So based on your numbers it would be $21.22/trip * 6 trips which is $126/hr.
It isn't $126/hour unless you make some very unrealistic assumptions and there is plenty of data out there indicating that Uber drivers don't make anywhere near that kind of money. You apparently didn't pay attention to that. I'm not saying someone can't make a living as an Uber driver. Just that they probably aren't going to get rich doing it. Uber drivers make $20-$25/hour. Not bad but that is around $40-50K/year and no where close to the quarter million you are implying. And Uber doesn't pay for car maintenance, car payments, fuel, etc so the real number is going to be considerably less.
That is more than YOU make, even after taking out expenses.
You have no idea what I make. I can assure you that I make more than an Uber driver. If I didn't I would be an Uber driver.
Uber also pays bonuses based on number of trips. Uber drivers aren't stupid. They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable.
Being profitable doesn't mean they are making a killing.
How much do we want to bet that there is a vocal contingent within Apple who aren't satisfied with Apple's drive to eliminate features on their products?
I don't actually have a problem with the fact that they went to USB-C or removed the function keys. Those are actually sensible things to do in principle. What is annoying is how they went about it and the lack of consideration for users real world needs. Removing the function keys is fine if you have something better but it's not clear that they do. Going to USB-C is fine but they didn't consider things like a replacement for Magsafe or the fact that maybe having at least one old school USB port might be useful to many people. I like the goal of reducing the number of ports to the minimum possible number very much but the path there should reflect the reality of the world we live in.
Actually the thing that annoys me the most about their laptops is the lack of a proper delete key meaning a key that will delete the character to the right of the cursor when pressed. What they call a delete key is what everyone else calls backspace and they don't have a delete key on their laptop keyboards. One has to push a function key combination to do that and that is more than a little irritating to me.
"Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we're committed to desktops," Cook wrote. "If there's any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear: we have great desktops in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that."
It means nothing until they back it up with real products that people can buy. Apple is clearly capable of making great desktop computers but they have kind of taken their eye off the ball lately since most of their revenue comes from the iPhone. I haven't seen a lot of innovation from Apple in the PC market for a while now and I'd say they've had more misses than hits. I think their desktop PCs are fine but not everything they could be.
isn't it like 10 minutes or less from the strip to the airport? say 5 round trips an hour at $14 each round trip. $7 there and back for different people is $70 an hour before expenses. not too bad.
It's something like 10 minutes each way. I've taken the ride from the Strip to McCarran airport. That would be 3 round trips per hour presuming there is zero time waiting between trips, which is an unrealistic assumption. It's also unrealistic to assume there would be a paying fare for every leg of those trips. So in an unrealistic best case scenario you are talking about $42/hour ($7/trip * 6 trips). More realistically it would probably be closer to half that. S20/hour is roughly $40K/year assuming an 8 hour work day and 240 working days per year. Then take off the cost of fuel, insurance, maintenance, taxes, Uber's cut of the fare, etc and you're probably lucky to clear $20K/year for what really is kind of a shitty and boring job.
Uber is not a tech or a transportation company.
Hogwash. They are a taxi service. Nothing more, nothing less. Their money comes from taxi fares so that is what they are. They make good use of tech but that doesn't make them a tech company, it makes them a tech savvy taxi company.
They are a lobbying company.
That might have some validity if they actually received money from lobbying. Any lobbying they do is to facilitate their business model but it isn't the core of what they do. Anyway mostly they just enter a market and completely ignore whatever laws are there rather than lobbying to get them changed into their favor. That's not lobbying unless you have a very twisted definition of the term.
Who gives a shit about ever making a profit?
The investors. Sooner or later they will give a shit. Nobody, not even Amazon can lose money forever without consequences.
Imagine what they would lose if they had to face the same regulation and oversight as everybody else in the Taxi industry.
A lot less probably because nobody would loan them the money to do that.
Never tear down a fence until you are absolutely certain why it was built in the first place.
no need. you can just turn the knob to "anti-blast".
Does it go to -11?
There is no abstraction.
It is the very definition of an abstraction layer. USPS won't allow delivery to a post office box so they substitute the street address of the po box and pretend it is a "street address" when it is not. A FAR simpler solution would have been to simply allow third parties to deliver to PO boxes and not waste everyone's time with street addresses that really aren't street addresses. So they added a layer of complexity to "solve" a problem that they created instead of eliminating the actual root cause of the problem.
If you just use the post office for package delivery, you know what happens if they can't deliver it into your hands? It goes back to your local post office, and they hold it for you-
That is simply not true as a general proposition. I get packages left on my porch by USPS on a routine basis if they don't fit in my mail box. And there is no meaningful difference between putting a package in an unlocked mailbox and putting it on your porch. Furthermore I'm not particularly worried about package theft where I live so if I'm fine with it being left there why is that a problem?
UPS sucks. They don't maintain anything like the network of post offices managed by USPS, and instead they like to gamble with the safety of your packages in ways the post office simply won't.
UPS will do exactly what they are paid to do. Same with FedEx. If the person sending the package tells them to leave it on the porch then that is what they do. If they pay them to hand it to a specific person then that is what they do. It's up to you. If you are too cheap to pay for signed delivery then the risk is on you if the package gets lost.
Blaiming the USPS for being "less efficient" is crazy: they *do more* for you.
If they were more efficient with packages there would be no need for companies like UPS and FedEx. I have literally shipped tens of thousands of packages though companies I've owned and worked in over the years. I've used pretty much every major package courier (USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL etc) plus a large number of LTL carriers. USPS is BY FAR the biggest pain in the ass to do business with, has the most clumsy handling procedures, operates the slowest, their software sucks (and is usually third party anyway), and for packages above a few pounds are routinely among the more expensive options if you ship any kind of volume at all. They certainly don't do more for me - not for anything I actually need. They have a bunch of needlessly complicated postage options which add cost and slow things down. I've NEVER seen a postal worker in a hurry. If I need a package delivered quickly (i.e. tomorrow), USPS is a terrible option. Stand in line at the post office? I've had to wait 20 minutes for them to deal with a 5 person line and nobody ahead of me was doing anything complicated or unusual. That is just absurd.
She was able to track the package online, but only when the package arrived at a USPS facility. UPS and FedEX scan the packages when they arrive and depart any facility.
That's why USPS tracking is basically useless. Tracking updates should happen any time someone handles the package. USPS doens't have the infrastructure to bother. Technically they have "tracking" but it's pretty much worthless except for proof of delivery.
No, UPS and FedEx aren't always cheaper.
No not always but pretty routinely. And you tend to get what you pay for.
Many post office offer street addressing as an option for your PO box.
So instead of simply dropping the prohibition against delivering packages to a PO box, USPS put an additional layer of abstraction on the problem with a quasi-fake street address that points to a post office box. This is why USPS sucks. They rarely do anything the easy or efficient way.