I think that the fundamental challenge with health insurance in the USA is that it is privately run. AFAIK, every other single payer system is run by the government. Private companies are motivated first and foremost by profit and with little to no competition the costs will skyrocket. Obamacare, despite its many critics, took the important step of at least trying to expand coverage. Unfortunately it did nothing to control costs.
The other main issue is that health insurance is employer based. The Obamacare exchanges offer some options that are not employer based but they are very expensive, unless you are lower income and can quality for subsidies.
The third issue is mindset. In countries with single payer systems like Canada, healthcare is considered a right of citizenship. Here in the US, it is simply a commodity sold to the highest bidder. Like many other things here if you are on the right side of the equation then health insurance is great. If you are not, then not so much.
These "scientists" have struck out so many times they are now calling it Climate Change rather than Global Warming. With global warming the temperature of the earth has to rise in order for you to be correct. By calling it climate change the temperature can go up or down and you can say...ha! told you so. Even with these hedged bets all of their predictions are still wrong.
Climate has been changing since the beginning of time. Sometimes we are a little closer to the sun and the temperature goes up and we drift further away from the sun and it goes down a bit. All of this has been happening long before the factories and the big bad automobile were on the scene.
Cow farts, it is said, are responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gasses. More than cars, airplanes and all other forms of transport combined. So keep that in mind the next time you read some alarmist environmentalist article about Miami being under water within the next 10 years. It's not happening.
Remember Al Gore and his dire predictions? In 2007 he predicted with great certainty:
1) Sea levels could rise 6 meters (20 feet). Not only has that been proven to be complete and utter bullshit but Antarctica has more ice now than it did then. By the way, Gore owns a seaside mansion. I guess he can't be too worried about rising sea levels after all.
2) Hurricane Katrina was man made. He predicted that hurricanes of this sort were the new norm. Wrong again. Much of the destruction from Katrina was due to the neglect in the levee repair so to that degree, and only that degree, it is man made. Political blundering and corruption, for which Louisiana has a long and storied history.
3) The Arctic ice is melting. The Arctic has actually gained ice mass. Those photos of polar bears stranded on a lonely piece of ice are pure propaganda.
There are more but you get the idea. How this Gore clown has evaded ridicule is beyond me. But by all means, cue up money for more research. I will continue to observe from the gallery, popcorn in hand.
The Democratic Trump indeed. Maybe this is some attempt to out-Trump Trump by being extreme left instead of extreme right. I hope that's not the case because I don't think it will work with voters.
I kind of sense that the country is looking for a sensible moderate. Someone that can deal with border security in a way that doesn't offend people. Someone that can deal with health costs. Expanding coverage was good. Let's make it better by doing something to control costs. That means taking on the insurance companies. I kind of hope that Schultz decides to give it a run. Not sure if he can actually win but maybe he can help steer the conversation back to a more centrist point of view.
Agreed - I just don't see that spelled out in the plan. It seems more like a collection of random thoughts than an actual plan of action. Before I can get behind the NGD I need to see something concrete (pardon the pun) in terms of how these lofty goals will be accomplished, how much it will cost, what will occur and when, economic impacts, etc.
This plan, as it currently laid out, calls for basically the wholesale elimination of air travel. What will be the impact of that? What time frame are we talking about?
For that matter, what is the plan to get us off coal? I think we can both agree that coal is dirty and needs to go at some point. But right now it is the cheapest and most efficient source of energy in many cases. Solar panels, as much as I like them conceptually, are on average only 17% efficient. That has got to improve drastically.
And how is electricity produced? In the USA currently most of it comes from coal. Could some of that come from solar or wind instead? Sure but not enough to power the number of trains proposed.
Trains work fine in densely populated urban areas like New York, Chicago, Boston, etc. but are hardly the answer in the suburbs or rural areas. These moonshot ideas in this pseudo-bill are simply impractical.
The electric grid is struggling to keep up with current demands. Adding thousands of trains into the mix - electric powered as you suggest - will bring down the electric grid overnight. How about we focus first on improving our infrastructure before adding all of this new stuff?
Those are the key words here. This is not a bill as such, it is a collection of ideas. Personally I would be highly skeptical of these kinds of grandiose plans. Here are a few choice quotes:
“Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” - Every building. In the entire United States. All of them. The quote mentions "replace" so I presume they are willing to demolish buildings that don't meet the standard.
“Build out high speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary” - Maybe we should check in with our friends in California and see how the rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is coming along: https://www.latimes.com/local/...
At last count the cost has ballooned from the original $6B to $10.6B - almost double.
Keep in mind this is 119 miles of train line, not the 10's of thousands of miles of train line we would need to make air travel "unnecessary". How are you going to get to Hawaii? Or New York to London? Build a train line across the ocean?
Don't trains also pollute? Or maybe Elon Musk going to build solar trains and solve all of that for us.
Look, I'm all for a cleaner environment but this woman is a complete wingnut.
The real question, of course, is how much will this boondoggle actually cost to which Ocasio-Cortez admits, “even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.”. In other words, astronomical not to mention completely impractical.
All is not lost though. I hear that Venezuela is having some trouble and could use a helping hand.
Many of these online reviews are nothing more than astroturfing. I take them all with a huge grain of salt. If you get a job offer from a company and really want to know what it's like there then the only way to know for sure is to ask someone you know that works there.
But even then, if they referred you then they stand to make a bonus. So they might be inclined to bend the truth a bit just to pocket a little extra cash.
Maybe the only way to combat this is to post not just raw numbers but voting trends. If reviews have gone way up or way down recently that should be a red flag.
I find myself watch things on YouTube more and more these days. There are tons of videos on all kinds of topics, including some of my hobbies. Much of it in easily consumable 10-15 minute clips. And it's free.
Hollywood productions and increasingly Netflix ones, are just full of political slant and anti-Trump stuff. Frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of it. I just want to be entertained, not lectured.
If this fragmentation of content continues it will only hurt the studios in the long run. If I can get a whole boatload of shows from Netflix for $10 a month why would I pay more than $1-2 for content only from Disney or CBS or Paramount?
By the same token, is Netflix still worth $10 a month without the content that studios are pushing exclusively on their own outlets?
If the plan is to more money from me it's not going to work. I'll just find better things to do with my time.
The cable companies are well and truly screwed. Caught up in a wave of cord cutting they are at the very same time beholden to shareholders that can't see past the next quarterly earnings report. If they drop prices to try and attract new customers (or stop the bleeding of those leaving) their revenue will drop in the short term and the shareholders are pissed. Not to mention that senior executives hold a lot of stock and will also feel the pain.
So the easiest thing to do in the short term is raise prices to increase revenue. The danger, of course, is that they will piss off even more customers and further accelerate the cord cutting. They are banking on the fact that some people are simply addicted to cable and won't leave no matter how much they charge. The number of people in this group is probably vastly overestimated by the cable companies. I suspect it's in the 10-20% range. A perhaps equal number of people are on the fence and a price increase will force their hand.
What is really working against the cable companies is that not only are there viable alternatives - those alternates are cheaper and better than the slop they are serving up currently. Couple that with the traditional horrendous customer service that the cables companies have, um, earned and you have a recipe for disaster.
I didn't give them my address or my phone number. They called me up one day out of the blue and asked for a donation. I have no idea where they got my number from. Probably some mailing list that charities share.
"and hope this marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration to support Wikipedia's future" - In other words, keep the gravy train running. Remember back in the day when you could give a one time donation to a charity and that was it? These days they all want you to sign up for these never ending annual contributions.
Years ago I gave money to a charity, who shall remain nameless, and every single year they would call me looking for more. Then I started to get calls from other charities that I had never spoken with before and somehow they got my home phone number. Again and again I told them thank you but I'm not interested. They kept calling. I asked them to stop calling me. They kept calling. I asked them to put me on their do not call list. Turns out that charities are exempt from the DNC legislation. Eventually I just cut off my home phone.
I'm not saying all charities are bad but I had a bad experience with them. These days I give anonymously or not at all.
Winco is great. They opened one near me about 2 years ago. Think of it like a Costco or Sam's Club without the membership fee. Awesome prices on items such as:
Bread - $1.67 for a fresh baked in the store loaf of whole wheat bread. Regular grocery stores charge about $3-4. Bagels - $1.76 for a package of 6. Other store charge at least $2.99. Orange Juice - $1.99, half the price of the other stores
The thing I like best is that they don't have these weekly sales gimmicks. The prices are the same week after week. They basically forced the Albertsons across the street out of business and that store had been there for 20+ years. Just as well - it was tired old dump anyway.
One other thing that makes Winco unique is that they are employee owned. Everyone that works there participates in profit sharing. They have incentive to do a great job.
As far as ordering groceries online? Not for me. I want to personally select every item I buy and don't mind taking the time to do it. Even non food items like paper towels seem to be a lot more expensive on Amazon that I can get at a brick and mortar store. To each their own but I will continue to shop in a proper B&M store.
is that the recycling places sell the plastic to companies in China and other places but they have no idea what actually happens to the plastic once they sell it. The * HOPE * is that it is dispose of it properly but the reality is that in many (most?) cases the plastic is simply dumped in the ocean.
Unlike metal and paper, there is no economical way to recycle plastic. About all you can really do with it is burn it. And we have rules against that. So the recycling companies, out to make a profit just like every other business, simply ship it to the Chinese. It is the cheapest way for them to get rid of the stuff. And with no oversight in place to monitor what happens to it they can just say "Hey, not my problem".
Step 1 - stop using plastics in the first place Step 2 - get some actual oversight over where the shit goes until Step 1 is in place
Any employer issued laptop should have the entire hard drive encrypted. The fact that it wasn't is not the fault of the employee who's laptop got stolen. It is the fault of the IT department and, ultimately, senior management.
Musk is pretty good at this. Why would he want to take over a GM factory with a whole lot of UAW baggage? GM Management is mostly at fault here but the unions have played a role as well. Is it any wonder that when Toyota, Honda and BMW decided to build plants in the US they chose not to build them in Detroit? They saw all of the union problems the Big 3 have had over the years and did not want to fall into that trap.
Musk is just trying to give the impression that Tesla could be successful in those plants where GM has failed. It's a thinly veiled swipe at GM.
Even if he were serious about this he would have to invest 100's of millions, or more, into revamping the plant to build Tesla cars. Not going to happen. Maybe he is angling to have the US government give it to him for free just to keep the jobs there. Who knows.
Apple products have never been about low prices. They charge premium prices for what they believe is a premium product. Their customers seem to agree. A lot of people put a premium on ease of use and visual esthetics. And they are willing to pay more for that.
I equate it to German cars. Some people believe it is worth it to spend more for a BMW or Merc because they believe it handles better and has superior engineering. Other people see those cars and just think money pit. There is no right answer. If you feel it's worth the extra money then go for it.
Where some people get in trouble is when they buy the expensive iPhone but can't really afford it. If they are honest with themselves they will realize that their budget doesn't allow for a $1000 phone. But the iPhone, like the German car, is an asperational product. It conveys status and success, at least in some eyes. So Apple lures them in by allowing them to spread the payments over 2 years. Then it doesn't seem like that much money. Just like the 3-4 year car lease.
My wife has an iPhone and she loves it. I'm an Android guy. We manage to coexist. I can see the appeal of the iPhone but I prefer the control that Android give me. To each their own.
Aside from California, very few states here in the USA have undertaken the effort of installing charging stations for electric cars. For most people, charging the cars at home is the only option. A few businesses have installed charging stations but those are few and far between.
For fully electric cars to be successful we will need at least half as many charging stations as they are gas stations. Who is going to build them? Is our electric grid up to the task of handling all that extra load?
if you look at it in sort of a Trojan Horse fashion then yes, Linux has taken over.
The majority of mobile phones are running on Android, derived from Linux. Almost all supercomputers run on some version of Linux Although most businesses still use Microsoft Office (or Office 365) many of the back office functions are running on some Linux server tucked away out of sight.
It has been a quiet revolution and I think that is how it will continue to be. Most attempts by Linux diehards to be front and center (i.e. Linux on the Desktop, Linux branded phones, etc.) have largely been flops, at least from a commercial standpoint.
I suspect this is a case of too much choice leading to confusion. There must be thousands of Linux distros and in the hands of the general populace it is simply too overwhelming. Sure, me and my fellow geeks love to mess with it but let's face it - we are in the minority. Windows and OSX have succeeded because they are familiar and relatively straightforward to use. The Linux community is just too splintered.
But in the hands of the right people, Linux is just magic. It is fast and stable and just hums along in the background.
The general consensus here is that Oklahoma is a shit hole and no way I'd ever live there...etc. I have been to Oklahoma many times and it's not nearly as bad as some here are casting it. Tulsa does have some bad neighborhoods, like nearly every city in the USA, but it isn't terrible. Given the choice I would choose Oklahoma City over Tulsa because there seemed to be more to do. But we did manage to find some very good restaurants there are some nice neighborhoods too.
On the plus side, if you are young and starting out you can buy a really nice house for surprisingly little money. Think about that while you are scratching a rent check for 4K a month for some closet sized apartment in Silicon Valley. Traffic is not bad either, a nice change from a lot of large US cities. Weather? It's not terrible as long as you can avoid the tornado paths, which always seem to strike the same places year after year.
Personally, I am fully settled and not looking to move anywhere but if I were young and mobile I would give this some thought. After all, it is only a 1 year commitment.
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I think that the fundamental challenge with health insurance in the USA is that it is privately run. AFAIK, every other single payer system is run by the government. Private companies are motivated first and foremost by profit and with little to no competition the costs will skyrocket. Obamacare, despite its many critics, took the important step of at least trying to expand coverage. Unfortunately it did nothing to control costs.
The other main issue is that health insurance is employer based. The Obamacare exchanges offer some options that are not employer based but they are very expensive, unless you are lower income and can quality for subsidies.
The third issue is mindset. In countries with single payer systems like Canada, healthcare is considered a right of citizenship. Here in the US, it is simply a commodity sold to the highest bidder. Like many other things here if you are on the right side of the equation then health insurance is great. If you are not, then not so much.
These "scientists" have struck out so many times they are now calling it Climate Change rather than Global Warming. With global warming the temperature of the earth has to rise in order for you to be correct. By calling it climate change the temperature can go up or down and you can say...ha! told you so. Even with these hedged bets all of their predictions are still wrong.
Climate has been changing since the beginning of time. Sometimes we are a little closer to the sun and the temperature goes up and we drift further away from the sun and it goes down a bit. All of this has been happening long before the factories and the big bad automobile were on the scene.
Cow farts, it is said, are responsible for 18% of all greenhouse gasses. More than cars, airplanes and all other forms of transport combined. So keep that in mind the next time you read some alarmist environmentalist article about Miami being under water within the next 10 years. It's not happening.
Remember Al Gore and his dire predictions? In 2007 he predicted with great certainty:
1) Sea levels could rise 6 meters (20 feet). Not only has that been proven to be complete and utter bullshit but Antarctica has more ice now than it did then. By the way, Gore owns a seaside mansion. I guess he can't be too worried about rising sea levels after all.
2) Hurricane Katrina was man made. He predicted that hurricanes of this sort were the new norm. Wrong again. Much of the destruction from Katrina was due to the neglect in the levee repair so to that degree, and only that degree, it is man made. Political blundering and corruption, for which Louisiana has a long and storied history.
3) The Arctic ice is melting. The Arctic has actually gained ice mass. Those photos of polar bears stranded on a lonely piece of ice are pure propaganda.
There are more but you get the idea. How this Gore clown has evaded ridicule is beyond me. But by all means, cue up money for more research. I will continue to observe from the gallery, popcorn in hand.
The Democratic Trump indeed. Maybe this is some attempt to out-Trump Trump by being extreme left instead of extreme right. I hope that's not the case because I don't think it will work with voters.
I kind of sense that the country is looking for a sensible moderate. Someone that can deal with border security in a way that doesn't offend people. Someone that can deal with health costs. Expanding coverage was good. Let's make it better by doing something to control costs. That means taking on the insurance companies. I kind of hope that Schultz decides to give it a run. Not sure if he can actually win but maybe he can help steer the conversation back to a more centrist point of view.
Agreed - I just don't see that spelled out in the plan. It seems more like a collection of random thoughts than an actual plan of action. Before I can get behind the NGD I need to see something concrete (pardon the pun) in terms of how these lofty goals will be accomplished, how much it will cost, what will occur and when, economic impacts, etc.
This plan, as it currently laid out, calls for basically the wholesale elimination of air travel. What will be the impact of that? What time frame are we talking about?
For that matter, what is the plan to get us off coal? I think we can both agree that coal is dirty and needs to go at some point. But right now it is the cheapest and most efficient source of energy in many cases. Solar panels, as much as I like them conceptually, are on average only 17% efficient. That has got to improve drastically.
And how is electricity produced? In the USA currently most of it comes from coal. Could some of that come from solar or wind instead? Sure but not enough to power the number of trains proposed.
Trains work fine in densely populated urban areas like New York, Chicago, Boston, etc. but are hardly the answer in the suburbs or rural areas. These moonshot ideas in this pseudo-bill are simply impractical.
The electric grid is struggling to keep up with current demands. Adding thousands of trains into the mix - electric powered as you suggest - will bring down the electric grid overnight. How about we focus first on improving our infrastructure before adding all of this new stuff?
Those are the key words here. This is not a bill as such, it is a collection of ideas. Personally I would be highly skeptical of these kinds of grandiose plans. Here are a few choice quotes:
“Upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” - Every building. In the entire United States. All of them. The quote mentions "replace" so I presume they are willing to demolish buildings that don't meet the standard.
“Build out high speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary” - Maybe we should check in with our friends in California and see how the rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles is coming along: https://www.latimes.com/local/...
At last count the cost has ballooned from the original $6B to $10.6B - almost double.
Keep in mind this is 119 miles of train line, not the 10's of thousands of miles of train line we would need to make air travel "unnecessary". How are you going to get to Hawaii? Or New York to London? Build a train line across the ocean?
Don't trains also pollute? Or maybe Elon Musk going to build solar trains and solve all of that for us.
Look, I'm all for a cleaner environment but this woman is a complete wingnut.
The real question, of course, is how much will this boondoggle actually cost to which Ocasio-Cortez admits, “even if every billionaire and company came together and were willing to pour all the resources at their disposal into this investment, the aggregate value of the investments they could make would not be sufficient.”. In other words, astronomical not to mention completely impractical.
All is not lost though. I hear that Venezuela is having some trouble and could use a helping hand.
Many of these online reviews are nothing more than astroturfing. I take them all with a huge grain of salt. If you get a job offer from a company and really want to know what it's like there then the only way to know for sure is to ask someone you know that works there.
But even then, if they referred you then they stand to make a bonus. So they might be inclined to bend the truth a bit just to pocket a little extra cash.
Maybe the only way to combat this is to post not just raw numbers but voting trends. If reviews have gone way up or way down recently that should be a red flag.
I find myself watch things on YouTube more and more these days. There are tons of videos on all kinds of topics, including some of my hobbies. Much of it in easily consumable 10-15 minute clips. And it's free.
Hollywood productions and increasingly Netflix ones, are just full of political slant and anti-Trump stuff. Frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of it. I just want to be entertained, not lectured.
If this fragmentation of content continues it will only hurt the studios in the long run. If I can get a whole boatload of shows from Netflix for $10 a month why would I pay more than $1-2 for content only from Disney or CBS or Paramount?
By the same token, is Netflix still worth $10 a month without the content that studios are pushing exclusively on their own outlets?
If the plan is to more money from me it's not going to work. I'll just find better things to do with my time.
"If you like your health care plan you can keep it" - Barack Obama.
Sound familiar? That was a flat out lie and he knew it at the time he said it.
Who ultimately pays for the wall is yet to be determined.
Trump, whether you care for him or not, has at least tried to keep his campaign promises. That's better than most every other politician.
The cable companies are well and truly screwed. Caught up in a wave of cord cutting they are at the very same time beholden to shareholders that can't see past the next quarterly earnings report. If they drop prices to try and attract new customers (or stop the bleeding of those leaving) their revenue will drop in the short term and the shareholders are pissed. Not to mention that senior executives hold a lot of stock and will also feel the pain.
So the easiest thing to do in the short term is raise prices to increase revenue. The danger, of course, is that they will piss off even more customers and further accelerate the cord cutting. They are banking on the fact that some people are simply addicted to cable and won't leave no matter how much they charge. The number of people in this group is probably vastly overestimated by the cable companies. I suspect it's in the 10-20% range. A perhaps equal number of people are on the fence and a price increase will force their hand.
What is really working against the cable companies is that not only are there viable alternatives - those alternates are cheaper and better than the slop they are serving up currently. Couple that with the traditional horrendous customer service that the cables companies have, um, earned and you have a recipe for disaster.
I didn't give them my address or my phone number. They called me up one day out of the blue and asked for a donation. I have no idea where they got my number from. Probably some mailing list that charities share.
Agreed. Lesson learned.
"and hope this marks the beginning of a long-term collaboration to support Wikipedia's future" - In other words, keep the gravy train running. Remember back in the day when you could give a one time donation to a charity and that was it? These days they all want you to sign up for these never ending annual contributions.
Years ago I gave money to a charity, who shall remain nameless, and every single year they would call me looking for more. Then I started to get calls from other charities that I had never spoken with before and somehow they got my home phone number. Again and again I told them thank you but I'm not interested. They kept calling. I asked them to stop calling me. They kept calling. I asked them to put me on their do not call list. Turns out that charities are exempt from the DNC legislation. Eventually I just cut off my home phone.
I'm not saying all charities are bad but I had a bad experience with them. These days I give anonymously or not at all.
Winco is great. They opened one near me about 2 years ago. Think of it like a Costco or Sam's Club without the membership fee. Awesome prices on items such as:
Bread - $1.67 for a fresh baked in the store loaf of whole wheat bread. Regular grocery stores charge about $3-4.
Bagels - $1.76 for a package of 6. Other store charge at least $2.99.
Orange Juice - $1.99, half the price of the other stores
The thing I like best is that they don't have these weekly sales gimmicks. The prices are the same week after week. They basically forced the Albertsons across the street out of business and that store had been there for 20+ years. Just as well - it was tired old dump anyway.
One other thing that makes Winco unique is that they are employee owned. Everyone that works there participates in profit sharing. They have incentive to do a great job.
As far as ordering groceries online? Not for me. I want to personally select every item I buy and don't mind taking the time to do it. Even non food items like paper towels seem to be a lot more expensive on Amazon that I can get at a brick and mortar store. To each their own but I will continue to shop in a proper B&M store.
is that the recycling places sell the plastic to companies in China and other places but they have no idea what actually happens to the plastic once they sell it. The * HOPE * is that it is dispose of it properly but the reality is that in many (most?) cases the plastic is simply dumped in the ocean.
Unlike metal and paper, there is no economical way to recycle plastic. About all you can really do with it is burn it. And we have rules against that. So the recycling companies, out to make a profit just like every other business, simply ship it to the Chinese. It is the cheapest way for them to get rid of the stuff. And with no oversight in place to monitor what happens to it they can just say "Hey, not my problem".
Step 1 - stop using plastics in the first place
Step 2 - get some actual oversight over where the shit goes until Step 1 is in place
Use a VPN and connect to a server in another State (or even another country). You should be using a VPN anyway just to be on the safe side.
186K to live in Silicon Valley?
Where the average house costs a million bucks?
And the State tax rate is double the rate where I live now?
And gas costs nearly $5 a gallon?
I would need at least double that to have the same standard of living as what I have now.
Any employer issued laptop should have the entire hard drive encrypted. The fact that it wasn't is not the fault of the employee who's laptop got stolen. It is the fault of the IT department and, ultimately, senior management.
Musk is pretty good at this. Why would he want to take over a GM factory with a whole lot of UAW baggage? GM Management is mostly at fault here but the unions have played a role as well. Is it any wonder that when Toyota, Honda and BMW decided to build plants in the US they chose not to build them in Detroit? They saw all of the union problems the Big 3 have had over the years and did not want to fall into that trap.
Musk is just trying to give the impression that Tesla could be successful in those plants where GM has failed. It's a thinly veiled swipe at GM.
Even if he were serious about this he would have to invest 100's of millions, or more, into revamping the plant to build Tesla cars. Not going to happen. Maybe he is angling to have the US government give it to him for free just to keep the jobs there. Who knows.
These idiots can't decide what they want to be. Lotus Notes? Jesus...I thought that piece of crap died off years ago.
Apple products have never been about low prices. They charge premium prices for what they believe is a premium product. Their customers seem to agree. A lot of people put a premium on ease of use and visual esthetics. And they are willing to pay more for that.
I equate it to German cars. Some people believe it is worth it to spend more for a BMW or Merc because they believe it handles better and has superior engineering. Other people see those cars and just think money pit. There is no right answer. If you feel it's worth the extra money then go for it.
Where some people get in trouble is when they buy the expensive iPhone but can't really afford it. If they are honest with themselves they will realize that their budget doesn't allow for a $1000 phone. But the iPhone, like the German car, is an asperational product. It conveys status and success, at least in some eyes. So Apple lures them in by allowing them to spread the payments over 2 years. Then it doesn't seem like that much money. Just like the 3-4 year car lease.
My wife has an iPhone and she loves it. I'm an Android guy. We manage to coexist. I can see the appeal of the iPhone but I prefer the control that Android give me. To each their own.
Aside from California, very few states here in the USA have undertaken the effort of installing charging stations for electric cars. For most people, charging the cars at home is the only option. A few businesses have installed charging stations but those are few and far between.
For fully electric cars to be successful we will need at least half as many charging stations as they are gas stations. Who is going to build them? Is our electric grid up to the task of handling all that extra load?
if you look at it in sort of a Trojan Horse fashion then yes, Linux has taken over.
The majority of mobile phones are running on Android, derived from Linux.
Almost all supercomputers run on some version of Linux
Although most businesses still use Microsoft Office (or Office 365) many of the back office functions are running on some Linux server tucked away out of sight.
It has been a quiet revolution and I think that is how it will continue to be. Most attempts by Linux diehards to be front and center (i.e. Linux on the Desktop, Linux branded phones, etc.) have largely been flops, at least from a commercial standpoint.
I suspect this is a case of too much choice leading to confusion. There must be thousands of Linux distros and in the hands of the general populace it is simply too overwhelming. Sure, me and my fellow geeks love to mess with it but let's face it - we are in the minority. Windows and OSX have succeeded because they are familiar and relatively straightforward to use. The Linux community is just too splintered.
But in the hands of the right people, Linux is just magic. It is fast and stable and just hums along in the background.
The general consensus here is that Oklahoma is a shit hole and no way I'd ever live there...etc. I have been to Oklahoma many times and it's not nearly as bad as some here are casting it. Tulsa does have some bad neighborhoods, like nearly every city in the USA, but it isn't terrible. Given the choice I would choose Oklahoma City over Tulsa because there seemed to be more to do. But we did manage to find some very good restaurants there are some nice neighborhoods too.
On the plus side, if you are young and starting out you can buy a really nice house for surprisingly little money. Think about that while you are scratching a rent check for 4K a month for some closet sized apartment in Silicon Valley. Traffic is not bad either, a nice change from a lot of large US cities. Weather? It's not terrible as long as you can avoid the tornado paths, which always seem to strike the same places year after year.
Personally, I am fully settled and not looking to move anywhere but if I were young and mobile I would give this some thought. After all, it is only a 1 year commitment.