As I understand, most gas stations are small independent operations.
Your understanding massively varies by country and company. There are some oil companies that are 100% owned and operated by oil company employees. Others favour franchising agreements taking a cut of the profit (which brings us back to square one that it affects oil companies). Not sure on the specifics of California but I have yet to see any place anywhere in the world where the majority of gas stations are independent.
But still the point is the same. Retail margins are huge compared to gas margins. The amount of effort put in by oil companies to accommodate and prolong time spent on the forecourt is incredible as buying a cup of coffee nets them more profit than the margin on the fuel.
If you live in a country where petrol follows Edgeworth pricing cycles then depending on the day of the cycle an operator may make a loss on fuel sold and make up for it only in retail sales.
I frequently travel to a popular holiday destination
How frequently? When people (especially Americans) use frequently and holiday destination in the same sentence I am further reminded that being able to service 80 cars per hour is incredible overkill.
But side note: Notice that I didn't question the 90% figure? Maybe you're the 10% who can't justify the electric car? Or the further 10% who like me frequently travel to a holiday destination only accessible by a large SUV despite the fact I actually own a small hatchback.
Anonymous doesn't mean that I can't track you from your house to your work. It's that I don't know who you are when you get to either destinations. We build an incredible database of information about anonymous people, unfortunately with enough information we can often de-anonymise them.
Same with Bitcoin being anonymous. Just because I know exactly how much money is in your wallet and exactly where you spend it doesn't make it less anonymous.
Steve Balmer: Throws chairs while shouting "developers developers developers!" Tim Cook: "LOL but look how much cash we have." Satya Nadella: "Huh? We sold a phone?" Quietly high-fives himself in the mirror. Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong". 3 days later several senior product positions at Apple open up for hiring. Spouses report their loved ones missing. Police find no trace but are baffled by reports of a severe thunderstorm located exclusively over Apple headquarters just after Jobs' announcement. Perfect iOS software released a few days later.
I remember when Google just indexed web pages and tried to provide relevant search results.
I do too, the internet sucked back then. Things had to find, services few and far between, and without search engines influencing web design we ended up with a shitstorm of stupid design tactics to try and make websites relevant.
[insert word salad here in the hopes that this comment will show up better in search result and thus gets some good mod points]
That's 80 fill-ups per hour. Truly, we are ready for a population using 90% electric cars.
Not sure if you're actively trolling or ignorant, but 80 fill-ups per hour is well overkill for 90% electric cars. The vast majority of electric charging will not be done mid trip. Some insider info: Oil companies are bracing themselves for not only a reduction in fuel demand, but also a massive reduction in retail service, which is of interest when you realise that is where their highest margin products get sold.
The entire country also has no train line longer than 40km, and the majority of the lines are a fraction of that length. The train network in HongKong is less complicated than the metro system of many cities, which also have no timetables.
I've ridden these trains. There are marks on the platform showing where the doors will be. There is a timer counting down until arrival. You can stand at the mark, and when the timer hits zero, step forward onto the train. It will be there with the door open right on that mark. Not even German trains are as punctual as Japanese trains.
Being punctual and showing a timer and markings are different things. What you describe exists all over the world. The difference is only if the timer is free-running or synced to the slightly late train:-)
This extreme fastidiousness is also why Japan's suicide rate is higher than the US homicide rate and suicide rate combined.
It's also entirely incorrect unless you're a time traveller from 2013 (in which case welcome but you may not like the world as it is).
The suicide rate in Japan is not only lower than the combined rate of suicide and homicide in the USA, it's actually not very different from the USA rate by itself. Additionally fastidiousness contributes more to the USA suicide rate than Japanese's. The Japanese are a hard working culture which emphasise face and respect. Committing suicide due to stress and overwork is quite a social taboo, committing suicide because you are unable to work on the other hand is quite a different story. The Japanese will sooner work themselves to death for their families than commit suicide.
Some 2016 figures for you in/10000 figures (combined from Google since wikipedia seems to be have stopped updating 4 years ago):
Suicide: Japan: 17.2 USA: 13.26
See not very different.
Homicide: Japan: 1.02 USA: 5.3
Very different.
Combined: Japan: 18.22 USA: 18.56
Wow that starts painting a very different picture to your argument doesn't it.
Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
No it's nothing more than a few people suddenly realising that elections include advertising and false promises. Don't worry as a species we'll get over this once the popular media discovers water is wet and then proceeds to dedicate the following year reporting on that new revelation.
Indeed Firefox becomes unstable when loaded, but the answer is not to reduce memory usage, but to find the root cause of the instability. The memory usage of a modern browser is related to the modern internet experience. In that one regard, Firefox is actually performing quite well.
Even you seasoned hard overworking American doesn't do "real work" 100% of the time while they are "at work". Despite your few employee benefits you generally do still get lunch breaks.
I don't really care about memory providing it is released when it is done. Firefox may not be the most memory efficient... well actually that can't be said. Depending on the benchmark of the day it either wins or comes second to Chrome. Not that it matters either way. RAM is disposable these days.
Sorry, but I'm fucking done with the excuse that consumers somehow don't know.
What are you talking about? The connections between them are non-obvious to the vast majority of people, and furthermore don't affect an ever larger portion of them.
I mean if this is your equivalent of education that consumers should react to then they should be running around screaming endlessly "the boogeyman is coming to get me, the boogeyman is coming to get me".
None of what you posted has had any effect on consumers other than taking up a bit of media airtime.
Are you sure it’s not the fact that a smart valve controlling how much hot water comes into your heating costs several hundred dollars whereas a non-smart one costs a bit more than a coffee?
And given the fact the smart ones pay for themselves over time, why should I "waste" the coffee money?
Why go to or stay in a country where you are not allowed to say anything but "I'm Happy!"
Even in the shit holes of the world you know that there's few places that get away with forcing their citizens to say that. It's a false dichotomy. The reality is, many people ARE happy elsewhere, and attempts to rank countries by various definitions of happiness has shown a continuous downward trend for the USA for many years now.
They won't notice it in this case, because the performance margins between browsers are now so small that you can't notice
Yes, now it is. Prior to the work Mozilla has been doing recently that was definitely not the case. Not only was it not the fastest for simple loads but far more importantly it didn't scale, didn't isolate, and a heavy workload very quickly brought down the entire browser. There's more to performance than rendering a screen in a single tab.
Users won't notice going forward, but some people (myself included) actually left Firefox due to performance.
Before I go walking from store to store to find exactly what I'm looking for sometimes it's just easier to click the buy button when you're already mid-research. My smallest online transaction has been $0.60 and it somehow included shipping. My smallest item purchased was a single physical screw, because stuff buying a 10 pack and having 9 laying around.
missing the freak show at the block and mortar retailer
So I was visiting the USA on a work trip and asked my colleagues what I should do while I'm here. The answer (facetiously) was to "Go down to the local Walmart and witness American culture."
I told them I've already seen the "people of Walmart" website so they instead invited me out to a jazz bar:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Rebel fuckton. I never was one to join the dark side.
As I understand, most gas stations are small independent operations.
Your understanding massively varies by country and company. There are some oil companies that are 100% owned and operated by oil company employees. Others favour franchising agreements taking a cut of the profit (which brings us back to square one that it affects oil companies). Not sure on the specifics of California but I have yet to see any place anywhere in the world where the majority of gas stations are independent.
But still the point is the same. Retail margins are huge compared to gas margins. The amount of effort put in by oil companies to accommodate and prolong time spent on the forecourt is incredible as buying a cup of coffee nets them more profit than the margin on the fuel.
If you live in a country where petrol follows Edgeworth pricing cycles then depending on the day of the cycle an operator may make a loss on fuel sold and make up for it only in retail sales.
I frequently travel to a popular holiday destination
How frequently? When people (especially Americans) use frequently and holiday destination in the same sentence I am further reminded that being able to service 80 cars per hour is incredible overkill.
But side note: Notice that I didn't question the 90% figure? Maybe you're the 10% who can't justify the electric car? Or the further 10% who like me frequently travel to a holiday destination only accessible by a large SUV despite the fact I actually own a small hatchback.
Anonymous doesn't mean that I can't track you from your house to your work. It's that I don't know who you are when you get to either destinations. We build an incredible database of information about anonymous people, unfortunately with enough information we can often de-anonymise them.
Same with Bitcoin being anonymous. Just because I know exactly how much money is in your wallet and exactly where you spend it doesn't make it less anonymous.
CEO responses to this kind of release:
Steve Balmer: Throws chairs while shouting "developers developers developers!"
Tim Cook: "LOL but look how much cash we have."
Satya Nadella: "Huh? We sold a phone?" Quietly high-fives himself in the mirror.
Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong". 3 days later several senior product positions at Apple open up for hiring. Spouses report their loved ones missing. Police find no trace but are baffled by reports of a severe thunderstorm located exclusively over Apple headquarters just after Jobs' announcement. Perfect iOS software released a few days later.
Metric tonne or Imperial tonne?
I prefer the fucktonne myself.
I remember when Google just indexed web pages and tried to provide relevant search results.
I do too, the internet sucked back then. Things had to find, services few and far between, and without search engines influencing web design we ended up with a shitstorm of stupid design tactics to try and make websites relevant.
[insert word salad here in the hopes that this comment will show up better in search result and thus gets some good mod points]
That's 80 fill-ups per hour. Truly, we are ready for a population using 90% electric cars.
Not sure if you're actively trolling or ignorant, but 80 fill-ups per hour is well overkill for 90% electric cars. The vast majority of electric charging will not be done mid trip. Some insider info: Oil companies are bracing themselves for not only a reduction in fuel demand, but also a massive reduction in retail service, which is of interest when you realise that is where their highest margin products get sold.
In Hong Kong there is no timetable.
The entire country also has no train line longer than 40km, and the majority of the lines are a fraction of that length. The train network in HongKong is less complicated than the metro system of many cities, which also have no timetables.
I've ridden these trains. There are marks on the platform showing where the doors will be. There is a timer counting down until arrival. You can stand at the mark, and when the timer hits zero, step forward onto the train. It will be there with the door open right on that mark. Not even German trains are as punctual as Japanese trains.
Being punctual and showing a timer and markings are different things. What you describe exists all over the world. The difference is only if the timer is free-running or synced to the slightly late train :-)
This extreme fastidiousness is also why Japan's suicide rate is higher than the US homicide rate and suicide rate combined.
It's also entirely incorrect unless you're a time traveller from 2013 (in which case welcome but you may not like the world as it is).
The suicide rate in Japan is not only lower than the combined rate of suicide and homicide in the USA, it's actually not very different from the USA rate by itself.
Additionally fastidiousness contributes more to the USA suicide rate than Japanese's. The Japanese are a hard working culture which emphasise face and respect. Committing suicide due to stress and overwork is quite a social taboo, committing suicide because you are unable to work on the other hand is quite a different story. The Japanese will sooner work themselves to death for their families than commit suicide.
Some 2016 figures for you in /10000 figures (combined from Google since wikipedia seems to be have stopped updating 4 years ago):
Suicide:
Japan: 17.2
USA: 13.26
See not very different.
Homicide:
Japan: 1.02
USA: 5.3
Very different.
Combined:
Japan: 18.22
USA: 18.56
Wow that starts painting a very different picture to your argument doesn't it.
Better still, it shouldn't be "wind tunnel" but "shock tunnel"
Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
No it's nothing more than a few people suddenly realising that elections include advertising and false promises. Don't worry as a species we'll get over this once the popular media discovers water is wet and then proceeds to dedicate the following year reporting on that new revelation.
Indeed Firefox becomes unstable when loaded, but the answer is not to reduce memory usage, but to find the root cause of the instability. The memory usage of a modern browser is related to the modern internet experience. In that one regard, Firefox is actually performing quite well.
I can't watch stuff and do real work
Even you seasoned hard overworking American doesn't do "real work" 100% of the time while they are "at work". Despite your few employee benefits you generally do still get lunch breaks.
I don't really care about memory providing it is released when it is done. Firefox may not be the most memory efficient ... well actually that can't be said. Depending on the benchmark of the day it either wins or comes second to Chrome. Not that it matters either way. RAM is disposable these days.
What the fuck kind of oven do you have that burns down your house!
Sorry, but I'm fucking done with the excuse that consumers somehow don't know.
What are you talking about? The connections between them are non-obvious to the vast majority of people, and furthermore don't affect an ever larger portion of them.
I mean if this is your equivalent of education that consumers should react to then they should be running around screaming endlessly "the boogeyman is coming to get me, the boogeyman is coming to get me".
None of what you posted has had any effect on consumers other than taking up a bit of media airtime.
Are you sure it’s not the fact that a smart valve controlling how much hot water comes into your heating costs several hundred dollars whereas a non-smart one costs a bit more than a coffee?
And given the fact the smart ones pay for themselves over time, why should I "waste" the coffee money?
Why go to or stay in a country where you are not allowed to say anything but "I'm Happy!"
Even in the shit holes of the world you know that there's few places that get away with forcing their citizens to say that. It's a false dichotomy. The reality is, many people ARE happy elsewhere, and attempts to rank countries by various definitions of happiness has shown a continuous downward trend for the USA for many years now.
The American dream is dead.
They won't notice it in this case, because the performance margins between browsers are now so small that you can't notice
Yes, now it is. Prior to the work Mozilla has been doing recently that was definitely not the case. Not only was it not the fastest for simple loads but far more importantly it didn't scale, didn't isolate, and a heavy workload very quickly brought down the entire browser. There's more to performance than rendering a screen in a single tab.
Users won't notice going forward, but some people (myself included) actually left Firefox due to performance.
Before I go walking from store to store to find exactly what I'm looking for sometimes it's just easier to click the buy button when you're already mid-research. My smallest online transaction has been $0.60 and it somehow included shipping. My smallest item purchased was a single physical screw, because stuff buying a 10 pack and having 9 laying around.
missing the freak show at the block and mortar retailer
So I was visiting the USA on a work trip and asked my colleagues what I should do while I'm here. The answer (facetiously) was to "Go down to the local Walmart and witness American culture."
I told them I've already seen the "people of Walmart" website so they instead invited me out to a jazz bar :-)
Until we won't even be able to prove it's fake.
That has already become irrelevant. You don't need proof when you have #fakenews.
There's code for that:
"Elected"