Uber's business model only works when people drive for Uber and nobody's being forced to drive for Uber. If every Uber driver took a vacation week off at once, it would probably change Uber's behavior. If Uber's terms are unacceptable, don't drive for Uber. Drive for Lyft, or find another part-time job. Modern crony capitalism has two sides, and the only real power workers have is to leave.
.... Automated appraisals are starting to be accepted, which should help.....
You have to really see a house to accurately appraise it. I'm no expert, but have both bought and sold homes in the past and will pay the money out of pocket to have a home professionally appraised, as a sort of insurance policy. It's the same as having a trusted mechanic check out a used car before pulling the trigger.
It costs a lot of money to both sell and buy. The break even point is only if the property that you buy costs less than the one you sold minus the transaction costs on both ends of the deal. In that situation you're throwing away x-dollars in equity that you would have had if you stayed put. Real Estate is not a liquid asset that you can simply push "Sell" on and get your money, despite what many Real Estate "professionals" will tell new buyers.
....if they were smart, they would be taking the old school VW platform, updating it with limited safety features, then replacing the gas tank up front with a LION pack...
The reason VW ended production of the Beetle and all the Type-1 derivatives such as the microbus is because of crash safety. There was no practical way to update the frame to pass a modern crash safety test. Any new EV would be a clean sheet design and would have as much to do with the Type-1 as the Golf-based new Beetle had.
I was in the process of selling a house and had open accounts. I would have stiffed them if I could have. I did stiff the home insurance. They demanded a full year of payment after I sold the house. I wrote them a letter and asked "if the house burns down 12 months after I sold it, could I collect on the damages?"
As a German I am surprised by your approach....I sometimes just write "cancel at the next possible date"....As for Kabel Deutschland, the 3 months are mentioned in paragraph 46(8) of the Telekommunikationsgesetz. And it has been proven in court that the 3 months start on the day you move....
I cancelled my cellphone exactly that way and had no phone for my last four months in Germany. But I still needed some way to communicate, line up my new job, organize my move, etc. so I was forced to wait until I moved before cancelling Kabel Deutschland. I guess I could have used Internet cafes for my last four months in Germany. Either way, I left after seven years because of a million small things, the sum of which made life unbearable.
You can cancel one month of the year (kind of like health insurance enrollment windows in America), and you have to give notice three months prior. Otherwise you can cancel in the case of a move, if and only if, they cannot not provide service at the new address. In my case, a different country. And you have to provide proof that you have moved before giving notice. Germans are masters of the art of the Zwickmühle which means Catch-22, imho.
I cancelled Kabel Deutschland Vodafone because of a move back home. To cancel you need to give three months notice and have to present a copy of the "Abmeldebescheinigung" which is basically a certificate from the local city that you have moved out of the country. I tried to give three months notice exactly three months prior to moving, but was told I could not give notice until they receive the certificate that I moved out. So in the end I was forced to pay three months of service I could not use. Maybe it was because I was a foreigner, but this was typical of my experience living and working in Germany and it caused me to leave after seven years. Death by a thousand small cuts.
Wasn't the original point of crypto to act as a replacement for cash in order to purchase goods and services? Not the other way around? Shouldn't the tobacco shops be accepting crypto as a form of payment for goods and services?
I agree with you 100%. I'm actively trying to move from the US to Europe primarily for this reason.
I lived in Europe for almost 10 years, but not for this reason. Public transit in Germany, where I lived, actually sucks. Don't get me wrong, it's great compared to the U.S., but that's not saying much. Trains were way overpriced, almost always overfilled, and often cancelled. Local transit was a bus service that took almost an hour to go from work to home, even though a direct route would be 10 km, because the only bus took a very circuitous route to where I lived. I started riding a bike to work instead, but that's not always possible in the Winter. After five years of public transit I had had enough. I would have bought a second car for commuting to work, but my job didn't pay enough to afford both a home and a second car, so I left instead and returned to the U.S.
...Who cares whether or not you sleep at 10 pm vs 11 pm? Or get up a 5 am vs 6 am?
If you live in a mid-northern latitude, such as around 50-60, DST is a nightmare in the summer because it doesn't get dark until close to midnight. Anyone living with small children will quickly discover they won't want to go to bed if the sun is out. I would definitely prefer to stay on Winter time the whole year so we can get some sleep in the Summer, or have time zones defined by both longitude and latitude.
Not this shit again...a super-rich dude envisions his idea of Utopia and everything goes great...that is, until the humans show up.....
Because everyone's version of utopia is their own version. Most utopians all want to be the benevolent dictator in complete control and assume everyone will follow their vision. The problem is anyone who signs up to live in a utopia has their own personal vision of what it should be, and eventually they'll want to make changes. It can go one of three ways, it becomes democratized and turns into just another place (Utah), people leave and it collapses (most hippie communes), or it turns into a police state (Jones Town).
Yea, it was a logic board failure. I went to a third party for a logic board repair, but they were unsuccessful. I don't remember how much I got for all the parts, but it was enough to buy an almost-new 2017 MacBook Air with zero money out of pocket. I'm still using that Air as my main computer.
Apple will price any older model repair far beyond the value of the device, making the service uneconomical.
Prove it, or STFU.
Anecdotally Apple quoted $950 to repair my 2015 MacBook Pro, but they would "recycle" it for free. Not obsolete, but beyond its retail value in working condition. I parted it out.
I'm writing this from the perspective of an American, and I am no fan of Iran. Iran has a terrible religious fundamentalist regime that murders people and exports terror throughout the Middle East, to include attacking Israel. But I am sick and tired of being told by our pols that Iran is our mortal enemy, and represents a grave national security threat that needs to be attacked and destroyed. Especially when those same pols supports a different middle eastern country that has a terrible religious fundamentalist regime that murders people and exports terror throughout the Middle East and occasionally to Lower Manhattan.
It's about nuclear weapons!!! But we support another Moslem nation that also has nuclear weapons, has live-tested them, gone to war with their neighbor multiple times, supported our enemies in Afghanistan, and is coincidentally where we found Osama Bin Laden's hiding place. So Iran can't have nuclear weapons, but the other one can? At least we know who's in charge in Iran. I'm not too sure who's really in charge in that other nuclear-armed Moslem country, it could be the military on Monday and Thursday, the civilians on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the clerics on Friday. They all take the weekend off.
Maybe it's human rights??? But our "allies" just dismembered a journalist and have been waging a criminal bombing campaign in Yemen. No big deal, according to our President, who reminded us that Journalist was a moslem immigrant (green card holder), and then proudly exclaimed how much money our "friends" were spending on weapons, basically putting a price on the head of that journalist, anyone with a green card (including my wife), and all Yemenis.
The President never struck me as especially intelligent, but he knew the price of those weapons down to the last nickel, so maybe he's a "stable genius" after all, especially when it comes to people giving him money.
What's the difference? One chants "death to Israel" so much that it has become cliche and supports Hezbollah, lobbing mortars into Israel and occasionally funds a suicide bomber. The other one exports Wahhabism, brainwashing one person at a time, including Mohamad Atta and a few hijackers who came to America and took up flying. The cynic in me believes the difference is one country is good for business, the other is not. I hope some day people will realize Iran is not our enemy and never will be our friend. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are not our "friends" or our "allies", but shouldn't me made into enemies. We need to get realistic about the Middle East and above all else be consistent. Either we're for human rights or against them. But we can no longer have it both ways.
AC beat me to it. It's a legal stunt to stave off Right To Repair's main argument that Apple won't even repair their own products once they reach an age where they're most likely to need repair. I suspect Apple will price any older model repair far beyond the value of the device, making the service uneconomical. Then they can argue in court, there's no demand for older-model repairs, so "right to repair" is unnecessary.
"The environment and our consumers are very important to us, At Apple we're pleased to offer repairs on all our products from the Apple III on up. Once consumers see the great trade in value we give them as a reward for their continued loyalty, most opt for one of our new cutting-edge products..."
I get it that the Titanic has become iconic for an era in ocean travel, but I don't see the point in recreating Titanic as a modern business venture. She'll probably do well initially until all the hardcore Titanic fans have had their obligatory voyage. But what then? It's almost as if someone decided to revive a DC-7 or Super Constellation and offered a "Pan Am" like service from Idlewild to Charles De Gaule at 200 mph and 20,000 feet. Cool yes, but I highly doubt a solid business plan.
The hype surrounding AI reminds me of the scene from the Graduate, Mr. McGuire leads Dustin Hoffman's character outside and says, "Ben, I just want to say one word, are you listening?" "yes sir" "Just one word: Plastics." Just one word: AI.
I lived in Germany for a decade and have the drivers license to prove it. The problem is about 10% of Germans think they're secretly an expert F1 driver, but they're not. It's usually some younger person in about a ten-year old two-door 3-series with spoiler, tuned exhaust, side skirts, etc. and he thinks he's real cool doing 200+ in traffic. When I see this, all I can think is euro-trash, which is about the same as white trash, or red neck in America.
The question that honestly needs to be asked is who really wants to own a driverless car? I'm not talking about driver assist, auto-pilot, etc. I'm talking about going down to the local dealer in order to purchase an SAE level-5 car that does not even have manual steering controls. Unless there is real demand, I expect that there will be no real market for this kind of technology. A lot of comments here are geared towards forcing demand, i.e. through insurance pricing. But we've been trying to force demand for EVs for many years and they're still a niche product. It won't work, because all it takes is one insurance company to not go along with the crowd and instantly gain all the customers who refuse to give up their manually-driven cars.
Level-5 is probably most suited for ride sharing, taxi, or delivery services. It might make owning a car for optional for many people, especially those living in dense urban settings where a vehicle can show up within minutes of being ordered. But I personally don't see it catching on any time soon for most people, especially those in rural areas, or in poorer countries.
Slashdot Mirror
Uber's business model only works when people drive for Uber and nobody's being forced to drive for Uber. If every Uber driver took a vacation week off at once, it would probably change Uber's behavior. If Uber's terms are unacceptable, don't drive for Uber. Drive for Lyft, or find another part-time job. Modern crony capitalism has two sides, and the only real power workers have is to leave.
.... Automated appraisals are starting to be accepted, which should help.....
You have to really see a house to accurately appraise it. I'm no expert, but have both bought and sold homes in the past and will pay the money out of pocket to have a home professionally appraised, as a sort of insurance policy. It's the same as having a trusted mechanic check out a used car before pulling the trigger.
It costs a lot of money to both sell and buy. The break even point is only if the property that you buy costs less than the one you sold minus the transaction costs on both ends of the deal. In that situation you're throwing away x-dollars in equity that you would have had if you stayed put. Real Estate is not a liquid asset that you can simply push "Sell" on and get your money, despite what many Real Estate "professionals" will tell new buyers.
....if they were smart, they would be taking the old school VW platform, updating it with limited safety features, then replacing the gas tank up front with a LION pack...
The reason VW ended production of the Beetle and all the Type-1 derivatives such as the microbus is because of crash safety. There was no practical way to update the frame to pass a modern crash safety test. Any new EV would be a clean sheet design and would have as much to do with the Type-1 as the Golf-based new Beetle had.
Why not just stiff them?...
I was in the process of selling a house and had open accounts. I would have stiffed them if I could have. I did stiff the home insurance. They demanded a full year of payment after I sold the house. I wrote them a letter and asked "if the house burns down 12 months after I sold it, could I collect on the damages?"
As a German I am surprised by your approach....I sometimes just write "cancel at the next possible date"....As for Kabel Deutschland, the 3 months are mentioned in paragraph 46(8) of the Telekommunikationsgesetz. And it has been proven in court that the 3 months start on the day you move....
I cancelled my cellphone exactly that way and had no phone for my last four months in Germany. But I still needed some way to communicate, line up my new job, organize my move, etc. so I was forced to wait until I moved before cancelling Kabel Deutschland. I guess I could have used Internet cafes for my last four months in Germany. Either way, I left after seven years because of a million small things, the sum of which made life unbearable.
You can cancel one month of the year (kind of like health insurance enrollment windows in America), and you have to give notice three months prior. Otherwise you can cancel in the case of a move, if and only if, they cannot not provide service at the new address. In my case, a different country. And you have to provide proof that you have moved before giving notice. Germans are masters of the art of the Zwickmühle which means Catch-22, imho.
Yes, that pretty much sums up my time in Germany, figuratively speaking of course.
I cancelled Kabel Deutschland Vodafone because of a move back home. To cancel you need to give three months notice and have to present a copy of the "Abmeldebescheinigung" which is basically a certificate from the local city that you have moved out of the country. I tried to give three months notice exactly three months prior to moving, but was told I could not give notice until they receive the certificate that I moved out. So in the end I was forced to pay three months of service I could not use. Maybe it was because I was a foreigner, but this was typical of my experience living and working in Germany and it caused me to leave after seven years. Death by a thousand small cuts.
I know your just derping. But how is Trump's debt different from FDR's (and every other scumbag in between)?
"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
Wasn't the original point of crypto to act as a replacement for cash in order to purchase goods and services? Not the other way around? Shouldn't the tobacco shops be accepting crypto as a form of payment for goods and services?
Knife, Apple, Gun & Ammo, Wagon, Rope, Bitcoin...
I accuse Col. Mustard who used a poison apple in the wagon AND he was paid in BitCoin.
I agree with you 100%. I'm actively trying to move from the US to Europe primarily for this reason.
I lived in Europe for almost 10 years, but not for this reason. Public transit in Germany, where I lived, actually sucks. Don't get me wrong, it's great compared to the U.S., but that's not saying much. Trains were way overpriced, almost always overfilled, and often cancelled. Local transit was a bus service that took almost an hour to go from work to home, even though a direct route would be 10 km, because the only bus took a very circuitous route to where I lived. I started riding a bike to work instead, but that's not always possible in the Winter. After five years of public transit I had had enough. I would have bought a second car for commuting to work, but my job didn't pay enough to afford both a home and a second car, so I left instead and returned to the U.S.
...Who cares whether or not you sleep at 10 pm vs 11 pm? Or get up a 5 am vs 6 am?
If you live in a mid-northern latitude, such as around 50-60, DST is a nightmare in the summer because it doesn't get dark until close to midnight. Anyone living with small children will quickly discover they won't want to go to bed if the sun is out. I would definitely prefer to stay on Winter time the whole year so we can get some sleep in the Summer, or have time zones defined by both longitude and latitude.
Not this shit again...a super-rich dude envisions his idea of Utopia and everything goes great...that is, until the humans show up.....
Because everyone's version of utopia is their own version. Most utopians all want to be the benevolent dictator in complete control and assume everyone will follow their vision. The problem is anyone who signs up to live in a utopia has their own personal vision of what it should be, and eventually they'll want to make changes. It can go one of three ways, it becomes democratized and turns into just another place (Utah), people leave and it collapses (most hippie communes), or it turns into a police state (Jones Town).
You could eat cash, but it wouldn't do you much good.
Yea, it was a logic board failure. I went to a third party for a logic board repair, but they were unsuccessful. I don't remember how much I got for all the parts, but it was enough to buy an almost-new 2017 MacBook Air with zero money out of pocket. I'm still using that Air as my main computer.
Apple will price any older model repair far beyond the value of the device, making the service uneconomical.
Prove it, or STFU.
Anecdotally Apple quoted $950 to repair my 2015 MacBook Pro, but they would "recycle" it for free. Not obsolete, but beyond its retail value in working condition. I parted it out.
I'm writing this from the perspective of an American, and I am no fan of Iran. Iran has a terrible religious fundamentalist regime that murders people and exports terror throughout the Middle East, to include attacking Israel. But I am sick and tired of being told by our pols that Iran is our mortal enemy, and represents a grave national security threat that needs to be attacked and destroyed. Especially when those same pols supports a different middle eastern country that has a terrible religious fundamentalist regime that murders people and exports terror throughout the Middle East and occasionally to Lower Manhattan.
It's about nuclear weapons!!! But we support another Moslem nation that also has nuclear weapons, has live-tested them, gone to war with their neighbor multiple times, supported our enemies in Afghanistan, and is coincidentally where we found Osama Bin Laden's hiding place. So Iran can't have nuclear weapons, but the other one can? At least we know who's in charge in Iran. I'm not too sure who's really in charge in that other nuclear-armed Moslem country, it could be the military on Monday and Thursday, the civilians on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the clerics on Friday. They all take the weekend off.
Maybe it's human rights??? But our "allies" just dismembered a journalist and have been waging a criminal bombing campaign in Yemen. No big deal, according to our President, who reminded us that Journalist was a moslem immigrant (green card holder), and then proudly exclaimed how much money our "friends" were spending on weapons, basically putting a price on the head of that journalist, anyone with a green card (including my wife), and all Yemenis. The President never struck me as especially intelligent, but he knew the price of those weapons down to the last nickel, so maybe he's a "stable genius" after all, especially when it comes to people giving him money.
What's the difference? One chants "death to Israel" so much that it has become cliche and supports Hezbollah, lobbing mortars into Israel and occasionally funds a suicide bomber. The other one exports Wahhabism, brainwashing one person at a time, including Mohamad Atta and a few hijackers who came to America and took up flying. The cynic in me believes the difference is one country is good for business, the other is not. I hope some day people will realize Iran is not our enemy and never will be our friend. Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are not our "friends" or our "allies", but shouldn't me made into enemies. We need to get realistic about the Middle East and above all else be consistent. Either we're for human rights or against them. But we can no longer have it both ways.
....If Tim Cook personally promised each and every Apple user sexual favors from their favorite movie star....
Living or deceased?
"The environment and our consumers are very important to us, At Apple we're pleased to offer repairs on all our products from the Apple III on up. Once consumers see the great trade in value we give them as a reward for their continued loyalty, most opt for one of our new cutting-edge products..."
(I'm not that good at corporate speak.)
I get it that the Titanic has become iconic for an era in ocean travel, but I don't see the point in recreating Titanic as a modern business venture. She'll probably do well initially until all the hardcore Titanic fans have had their obligatory voyage. But what then? It's almost as if someone decided to revive a DC-7 or Super Constellation and offered a "Pan Am" like service from Idlewild to Charles De Gaule at 200 mph and 20,000 feet. Cool yes, but I highly doubt a solid business plan.
The hype surrounding AI reminds me of the scene from the Graduate, Mr. McGuire leads Dustin Hoffman's character outside and says, "Ben, I just want to say one word, are you listening?" "yes sir" "Just one word: Plastics." Just one word: AI.
I lived in Germany for a decade and have the drivers license to prove it. The problem is about 10% of Germans think they're secretly an expert F1 driver, but they're not. It's usually some younger person in about a ten-year old two-door 3-series with spoiler, tuned exhaust, side skirts, etc. and he thinks he's real cool doing 200+ in traffic. When I see this, all I can think is euro-trash, which is about the same as white trash, or red neck in America.
The question that honestly needs to be asked is who really wants to own a driverless car? I'm not talking about driver assist, auto-pilot, etc. I'm talking about going down to the local dealer in order to purchase an SAE level-5 car that does not even have manual steering controls. Unless there is real demand, I expect that there will be no real market for this kind of technology. A lot of comments here are geared towards forcing demand, i.e. through insurance pricing. But we've been trying to force demand for EVs for many years and they're still a niche product. It won't work, because all it takes is one insurance company to not go along with the crowd and instantly gain all the customers who refuse to give up their manually-driven cars.
Level-5 is probably most suited for ride sharing, taxi, or delivery services. It might make owning a car for optional for many people, especially those living in dense urban settings where a vehicle can show up within minutes of being ordered. But I personally don't see it catching on any time soon for most people, especially those in rural areas, or in poorer countries.