The Chevy Bolt starts at $37,495 (vs the Model 3's $36,200)
MSRP on Chevy Bolt is indeed $37495, but on Model 3 it's $35k. In fact, I'm struggling to see where $36200 came from. Doc and delivery (which you have to pay for on Bolt too) is $1k, not $1,2k.
Beyond that, Model 3 is easily superior on a stat-by-stat and feature-by-feature comparison, and has a much more interesting options list. Heck, even DC charging is an optional extra on Bolt, and it's a third the power with a much worse network.
Don't get me wrong, Bolt would be a good choice if Model 3 didn't exist. But it's just not competitive versus it.
Both of my figures included MSRP plus the mandatory destination charge. The Bolt Is $36,620 MSRP plus $875 destination charge ( http://www.chevrolet.com/desti... ). It was originally reported that the Tesla's destination charge was $1200. If it actually ended up being $1000 then thanks for the correction.
Beyond that, as I said...feel free to debate which is better, but it's wrong to say that Chevy (or Detroit, as it was stated) can't compete for that price range. In fact, if anything it's the opposite. As another poster reminded me (I had read it before but forgot), Tesla hasnt actually shipped a single Model 3 at anywhere near the base price configuration, and won't for quite some time. They are shipping only higher priced models initially, which makes me wonder if they could even profitably deliver a base model now, or are they limiting manufacturing to the higher priced model to pad up the price into the profitable range while they try to reduce costs into making the base model profitable too.
Whatever the reason, the sub $40k Bolt is currently infinitely superior to the sub $40k Model 3, because the sub $40k Model 3 does not currently exist.
I appreciate your attempt at correcting my projections, but I believe your suggestion that my calculations are off by a month are not themselves correct. I've been paying close attention to the calendar over the last few years and noticed something significant that you didn't seem to take into account. In 2016, we had 366 days in the year. Last year we only had 365. Over the next year, I expect we'll have lost another day, 2 days the year after that, and so on. By the time 7.5 years from now rolls around, we should have fallen behind by an additional 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+(8/2) days. We will have missed out on an entire 32 days, or slightly over a month. Thus, based on the current 365 day length of the year, 7.5 years from now will actually be an entire month later than you might project if you don't take this into account.
Also spoiler alert. If Detroit could deliver a $35k electric car, they would. They can't. Tesla is not stopping them. Detroit is stopping Detroit.
The Chevy Bolt starts at $37,495 (vs the Model 3's $36,200) and is actually cheaper than the Model 3 for typical option packages. Range is similar. Warranty is similar (better in some ways, worse in others). Please feel free to argue the merits of one vs the other (I personally like Tesla designs, but at least the Bolt doesn't make you navigate a fucking touchscreen display to use the windshield wipers...WTF were their engineers thinking? ), but the point is the Detroit isn't as uncompetitive as you seem to make it sound like they are.
Wow...just take their current production rate and forecast it out. What a brilliant forecasting model. However, I'm going to challenge your your model with a one of my own that is equally brilliant.
From the chart in that article, the estimate is that Telsa manufactured about 107 of the Model 3 in September. In October that jumped to 232. November was 686. Dec was 1499, and in January they manufactured 2909 new vehicles.
So on average, that's at least a doubling of production every month (higher actually, but we'll just say double to keep it simple). At that rate, by April they will be manufacturing 23,272 vehicles per month. By July, that will be up to 186,176 per month. By October they should be manufacturing 1,489,408 vehicles per month. And just skipping ahead a bit, by August 2019 they should be manufacturing about 1.5 billion of the Model 3 per month. And that's only 1.5 years out. Calculating out to your estimated 7.5 year time frame, I estimate that by then Tesla will be producing 7,202,335,148,562,342,439,363,104,735,232 units per month.
Do you see anything wrong with either of our projections?
His post reads as if he is under the impression that an oxford comma is an implicit comma before the conjunction at the end of the list, whereas in reality it is an explicit comma.
You don't quite get it. Yes it's "dumbed down"....down to the level where every person with no program ability and who hasn't even written a hello world application can "program" it. Do you bitch that commercial airlines are just dumbed down so that every idiot who doesn't know how to land a plane can fly?
So that's the point of this: simple programing-like features without any requirement of being able to program. But even if you do know how to program, if the features you are interested in are supported, it's very simple to do. Want to access your wifi thermostate? No digging into APIs, installing modules, trial and error coding and debugging, finding it doesn't work because you forgot to handle an error condition that only occasionally shows up, etc. Nope, you don't need any of that. Just select your supported device, sign in to the service account, and then click on the action or event you are interested in. It takes seconds instead of hours or days figuring all the bits and pieces out.
IF This Then That. It's a handy little app whose sole purpose is to tie into different networks, systems, monitors, etc, and then run a set of rules. When it see something, it does something else. If theres a post on my favorite subreddit, send me an email. If I leave the house, then turn down the thermostat. If I arrive home, turn on the lights. If I reach a certain location, email a person to let them know I'll be arriving in 15 minutes. If I receive a text message, archive it to a google drive spreadsheet. If the train is running late, send me a notification. And so in. It ties into all sort of systems...google apps, social media, appliances and home automation, dominos pizza, github, transportation services, and more.
it may be possible to then do spectre in the opposite direction...preload the cache and if any preloaded pages become slower
That would presumably be a LOT harder since the cache is shared so any process running can cause the cache to flush and you typically do not have control over what gets flushed.
Indeed. In fact if you reread my post, I said exactly that. But I wouldn't want to say impossible. People knew about the currently vulnerability well over a decade ago, it was just always believed to be impractical (until someone found a way to make it practical). So while detecting a cache flush doesn't seem practical, who know what someone could figure out. One possibility would be to spawn a whole ton of threads to try and make it very likely that it's all your threads in execution at the time, and then have those dummy threads do nothing to flush the cache. That would be difficult, unpredictable, error prone, and slow...but again, that's the same sort of things that were said about the current vulnerability a decade ago. Someone may one day figure a way to make it practical, so you really need to engineer a system that has absolutely no residual side effects when the state is rolled back.
Even invalidating the loaded cache pages isn't necessarily sufficient. Because the act of loading one page means the flushing of another page, it may be possible to then do spectre in the opposite direction...preload the cache and if any preloaded pages become slower to access then you can determine the branch predictor caused them to be flushed. At least in theory....in practice that becomes more difficult in a multiprocess environment where other processes could be responsible for flush,but I certainly wouldnt want to predict it isn't possible.
So the full solution may need to be more complex. Just like the CPU includes more registers than the architecture specifies so it can do scrap work in this extra registers and then roll it back without affecting the real registers,the CPU may need extra cache pages so that it can load a page and then flush it without having lost any of the previously loaded pages.
Or alternatively, approach the problem from the opposite perspective. The problem is caused not just because of speculative execution but also because (for performance reason) the OS leaves all process memory mapped into every processes address space and the uses permission to try and make that memory unavailable. The other fix is to find a way to redesign virtual memory so that other processes memory is NOT mapped into each others memory space and is thus truely inaccessible. But that may be an even more difficult solution to implement
Not sure what you mean? My 7 year old daughter loves Zelda, Mario, Arms, and Snipperclips. And I think Nintendo has always targeted the family. Customers grew up loving nintendo, have kids, and then share nintendo gaming with their kids.
Good for you. I have an xbox one too (no PS4 though...sony can fuck off before they ever get a penny from me). My kids by far prefer Nintendo games, as do I. Enjoy what you like or can afford.
Seriously, I'm sure many of you will be happily mocking Nintendo's newest effort. But I think this particular product isn't aimed at virgin gamers living in their mothers' basements. This product is aimed at families with children. My 7 year old daughter loves to cut up every cardboard box we get and make something out of it. She makes houses, cars, planes, and even a recreation of Wall-e. This sort of stuff is aimed at them. Only now they don't just get to create lifeless box items for their imagination. They can see the mechanics of how steering wheels, pianos, and fishing reels work. The can see the pulley's and cameras driving this stuff. This is engineering for elementary school kids. You want to promote kids getting into STEM fields? Try cultivating their imaginations instead of mocking it.
Quality headphones frequently come with 3.5mm jack as standard with a screw on 1/4" adaptor.
That depends on your definition of "quality headphones". High ends intended for plugging into a pre-amp have 1/4" plugs because that's what the pre-amps have. They may or may not come with an adapter, depending on whether most 3.5mm devices can drive them or not. It saves on support calls to not deliver an adapter and get calls from people who can't drive them with their phones or other underpowered devices.
Today I learned that my Sennheiser HD 560 Ovation II headphones are not quality headphones.
Indeed. One need only look at MP3 and MPEG to see that if you get in early and get your foothold, you're pretty well set even if something free and better comes along.
I fear lots of people will get overexposed and end up washed out financially.
Definitely. This might look like cryptocoin's golden hour, but the market is oversaturated. Every ordinary company is trying frame their product in cryptocoin terms, instead of just staying focused on their core product. Companies keep pulling this crap, but it's only a matter of time until they push it too far and investors see that this shit doesn't pan out they way they say it will. Once one or two fail, get ready to watch the speed at which they all shutter.
I'm not sure he's talking about that. I think he's referring to the users that were on Windows 7 and/or 8 who got a forced Windows 10 install without any user intervention. There were several stories on slashdot about it.
If it's anything like the last ASUS I owned (a TF101 Transformer) the keyboard will be shit (half the keys will stop working within 12 months) and there'll be a half-dozen dead pixels that, with microscopic examination, turn out to be grass seeds under the glass. How the fuck do grass seeds get inside a screen at the factory?
I came here with the same thoughts. My thought process as I was reading the summary:
"Would You Use a Smartphone-Style Laptop With a Three-Day Battery Life? " Well, yeah that does sound like something I might...."ASUS is claiming"....you know what, I think I changed my mind.
I had a Transformer Prime (the model after your TF101). I had zero problems with the screen or keyboard. On the other hand, the GPS was absolute shit. It wouldn't function unless you had absolute clear line of sight. I mean, even inside my pickup truck, with windows all around, including a sunroof overhead, was not able to acquire a reliable signal. It was so bad, ASUS went as far as creating an obnoxious hardware dongle we could connect to the device. Oh, but you couldn't use the dongle while it was docked to the keyboard. What an absolute joke. The wifi was also pretty damn poor with terrible signals and disconnects. Most of us stupidly held out because we were led to believe it would be fixed with a software update, but it got to the point that ASUS eventually refused to acknowledge there was a problem any more. There were so many customers upset about this device, Amazon was voluntarily offering 100% refunds, no questions asked, for the device something like 6 or 9 months after sale. You just called them up, told them your problem, and they were instantly saying "yeah, we've had complaints about this. We'll issue you a refund"
Stupid me decided that I loved the form factor so much, I'll just take my refund from Amazon and order the newest model, the ASUS Transformer Infinity. Mostly the same device (and compatible with the old dock I had, which I had not bought from amazon) but HD resolution, and you could see they they redesigned the case so that there was plastic instead of metal over the place where the wifi and GPS antenna was. The hardware on this model seemed great. I was very happy. Performance was super snappy, and it worked flawlessly. Then every single update got slower and slower. And we're not talking the type of slow that you see with your normal cell phone with too many apps installed. After about 1 year it had gotten so bad, I factory reset the device so it was totally clean. Even with nothing additional installed, after boot up ( and give it a minute or 2 to finish booting, but don't start any apps) you would still experience anywhere from 1 to 10 second delays in registering touch screen input. In the span of about a year it became absolutely unusable for anything. The wife an I each had our own with keyboard dock, so that's $1300 down the drain.
Fool me twice, can't get fooled again. FUCK YOU ASUS!!!!
Wow, that was a very well thought out and informative reply. Thank you for enlightening me with your superior knowledge on the subject. I'm just sad that, unlike your previous reply to me, this reply didn't contain any more inaccuracies.
And how many of them have debt because the currency is inflationary? For them, it's better to invest in a house and take on that debt than to have the money sitting around.
Uhhh, considering the average person's "financial intelligence" (there's probably a better term for it that's escaping me right now), I'm pretty sure their level of debt is not a strategic decision. People are in debt because they are careless with spending, don't plan for the future, don't foresee unexpected expenses. And that's WITHOUT having to foresee the effects of decades of deflation on their spending decisions.
When you buy a mortgage, you owe a fixed amount of currency. With inflation, over time your income tends to increase slightly year to year, and over the years the mortgage becomes a smaller and smaller part of your income, making it more and more affordable.
The banks are not morons. They know money is worth less in the future, and their interest rate takes that into account. You're not getting a free ride because your currency is constantly being devalued.
Of course they aren't moron. Of course they figure inflation into it. On the other hand, by comparison, the average person is fairly stupid when it comes to finances. They often can't look 1 or 2 years down the road, much less 10, 20, or 30 years. They can't think about the other things that are going to happen in life, and whether they will continue to be able to afford that payment that seems reasonable today. Having a kid or 2 (possibly by accident), unexpected health complications, having to care for an elderly parent. These are not things most people will take into account when committing to buying a house.
Inflation provides the vast majority of people with a safety net. Without inflation, a decision you make today that seems financially sound might not be such a good idea when you factor in some future unknown expenses. With inflation, the commitment you make today on buying a house isn't such a large factor in 10+ years when that new expense comes up. On the other hand, deflation is the exact opposite. A seemingly financially sound decision today does not remain financially sound 10 years from now even if no new expenses come up. So now, not only does the average person have to prepare for the unexpected, they are required to look 20-30 years down the road and plan for the expected. They have to take 20-30 years of deflation into account and realize what their income is likely to be that far away to decide if they are likely to be able to afford a house. For the vast majority of people, that's asking a hell of a lot.
Maybe you should take a look at wage increases vs. inflation for the past 70 years or so.
In the current system, it 'appears' as if your wage is going up, but it is in fact shrinking.
But in a system built on lies... who wants to hear the truth?
You are actually wrong. It is not shrinking. Over the long run it in increasing very slightly. Over the last few decades it has mostly been stagnant. Any (slight) decrease is only in the shorter term. When we are talking about mortgage affordability we are generally talking about 30 year spans. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...
But you completely miss the point of my post. Yes inflation adjusted income only changes slightly over time (which is to be expected...cost of all good adjusts to what people are making, otherwise we'd all be living in mansions and driving ferraris). But look at that graphs above and notice the slope of that nominal income line. Now realize that the slope of your nominal mortgage payment over 30 years is zero. Your mortgage payment stays the same every year, while your income grows and grows. Even if that larger income doesn't give you more buying power, it makes your large mortgage debt easier and easier to afford every year.
Now try switching to a deflationary currency. To do that, you just flip the graph upside down. Your real (inflation adjusted) income/buying power stays more or less flat over time, but your nominal income would be sloping down. Buy your mortgage payment would stay flat, and every year get just a little more difficult to afford.
Slashdot Mirror
MSRP on Chevy Bolt is indeed $37495, but on Model 3 it's $35k. In fact, I'm struggling to see where $36200 came from. Doc and delivery (which you have to pay for on Bolt too) is $1k, not $1,2k.
Beyond that, Model 3 is easily superior on a stat-by-stat and feature-by-feature comparison, and has a much more interesting options list. Heck, even DC charging is an optional extra on Bolt, and it's a third the power with a much worse network.
Don't get me wrong, Bolt would be a good choice if Model 3 didn't exist. But it's just not competitive versus it.
Both of my figures included MSRP plus the mandatory destination charge. The Bolt Is $36,620 MSRP plus $875 destination charge ( http://www.chevrolet.com/desti... ). It was originally reported that the Tesla's destination charge was $1200. If it actually ended up being $1000 then thanks for the correction.
Beyond that, as I said...feel free to debate which is better, but it's wrong to say that Chevy (or Detroit, as it was stated) can't compete for that price range. In fact, if anything it's the opposite. As another poster reminded me (I had read it before but forgot), Tesla hasnt actually shipped a single Model 3 at anywhere near the base price configuration, and won't for quite some time. They are shipping only higher priced models initially, which makes me wonder if they could even profitably deliver a base model now, or are they limiting manufacturing to the higher priced model to pad up the price into the profitable range while they try to reduce costs into making the base model profitable too.
Whatever the reason, the sub $40k Bolt is currently infinitely superior to the sub $40k Model 3, because the sub $40k Model 3 does not currently exist.
I appreciate your attempt at correcting my projections, but I believe your suggestion that my calculations are off by a month are not themselves correct. I've been paying close attention to the calendar over the last few years and noticed something significant that you didn't seem to take into account. In 2016, we had 366 days in the year. Last year we only had 365. Over the next year, I expect we'll have lost another day, 2 days the year after that, and so on. By the time 7.5 years from now rolls around, we should have fallen behind by an additional 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+(8/2) days. We will have missed out on an entire 32 days, or slightly over a month. Thus, based on the current 365 day length of the year, 7.5 years from now will actually be an entire month later than you might project if you don't take this into account.
Also spoiler alert. If Detroit could deliver a $35k electric car, they would. They can't. Tesla is not stopping them. Detroit is stopping Detroit.
The Chevy Bolt starts at $37,495 (vs the Model 3's $36,200) and is actually cheaper than the Model 3 for typical option packages. Range is similar. Warranty is similar (better in some ways, worse in others). Please feel free to argue the merits of one vs the other (I personally like Tesla designs, but at least the Bolt doesn't make you navigate a fucking touchscreen display to use the windshield wipers...WTF were their engineers thinking? ), but the point is the Detroit isn't as uncompetitive as you seem to make it sound like they are.
Wow...just take their current production rate and forecast it out. What a brilliant forecasting model. However, I'm going to challenge your your model with a one of my own that is equally brilliant.
From the chart in that article, the estimate is that Telsa manufactured about 107 of the Model 3 in September. In October that jumped to 232. November was 686. Dec was 1499, and in January they manufactured 2909 new vehicles.
So on average, that's at least a doubling of production every month (higher actually, but we'll just say double to keep it simple). At that rate, by April they will be manufacturing 23,272 vehicles per month. By July, that will be up to 186,176 per month. By October they should be manufacturing 1,489,408 vehicles per month. And just skipping ahead a bit, by August 2019 they should be manufacturing about 1.5 billion of the Model 3 per month. And that's only 1.5 years out. Calculating out to your estimated 7.5 year time frame, I estimate that by then Tesla will be producing 7,202,335,148,562,342,439,363,104,735,232 units per month.
Do you see anything wrong with either of our projections?
His post reads as if he is under the impression that an oxford comma is an implicit comma before the conjunction at the end of the list, whereas in reality it is an explicit comma.
You don't quite get it. Yes it's "dumbed down"....down to the level where every person with no program ability and who hasn't even written a hello world application can "program" it. Do you bitch that commercial airlines are just dumbed down so that every idiot who doesn't know how to land a plane can fly?
So that's the point of this: simple programing-like features without any requirement of being able to program. But even if you do know how to program, if the features you are interested in are supported, it's very simple to do. Want to access your wifi thermostate? No digging into APIs, installing modules, trial and error coding and debugging, finding it doesn't work because you forgot to handle an error condition that only occasionally shows up, etc. Nope, you don't need any of that. Just select your supported device, sign in to the service account, and then click on the action or event you are interested in. It takes seconds instead of hours or days figuring all the bits and pieces out.
IF This Then That. It's a handy little app whose sole purpose is to tie into different networks, systems, monitors, etc, and then run a set of rules. When it see something, it does something else. If theres a post on my favorite subreddit, send me an email. If I leave the house, then turn down the thermostat. If I arrive home, turn on the lights. If I reach a certain location, email a person to let them know I'll be arriving in 15 minutes. If I receive a text message, archive it to a google drive spreadsheet. If the train is running late, send me a notification. And so in. It ties into all sort of systems...google apps, social media, appliances and home automation, dominos pizza, github, transportation services, and more.
it may be possible to then do spectre in the opposite direction...preload the cache and if any preloaded pages become slower
That would presumably be a LOT harder since the cache is shared so any process running can cause the cache to flush and you typically do not have control over what gets flushed.
Indeed. In fact if you reread my post, I said exactly that. But I wouldn't want to say impossible. People knew about the currently vulnerability well over a decade ago, it was just always believed to be impractical (until someone found a way to make it practical). So while detecting a cache flush doesn't seem practical, who know what someone could figure out. One possibility would be to spawn a whole ton of threads to try and make it very likely that it's all your threads in execution at the time, and then have those dummy threads do nothing to flush the cache. That would be difficult, unpredictable, error prone, and slow...but again, that's the same sort of things that were said about the current vulnerability a decade ago. Someone may one day figure a way to make it practical, so you really need to engineer a system that has absolutely no residual side effects when the state is rolled back.
Even invalidating the loaded cache pages isn't necessarily sufficient. Because the act of loading one page means the flushing of another page, it may be possible to then do spectre in the opposite direction...preload the cache and if any preloaded pages become slower to access then you can determine the branch predictor caused them to be flushed. At least in theory....in practice that becomes more difficult in a multiprocess environment where other processes could be responsible for flush,but I certainly wouldnt want to predict it isn't possible.
So the full solution may need to be more complex. Just like the CPU includes more registers than the architecture specifies so it can do scrap work in this extra registers and then roll it back without affecting the real registers,the CPU may need extra cache pages so that it can load a page and then flush it without having lost any of the previously loaded pages.
Or alternatively, approach the problem from the opposite perspective. The problem is caused not just because of speculative execution but also because (for performance reason) the OS leaves all process memory mapped into every processes address space and the uses permission to try and make that memory unavailable. The other fix is to find a way to redesign virtual memory so that other processes memory is NOT mapped into each others memory space and is thus truely inaccessible. But that may be an even more difficult solution to implement
Not sure what you mean? My 7 year old daughter loves Zelda, Mario, Arms, and Snipperclips. And I think Nintendo has always targeted the family. Customers grew up loving nintendo, have kids, and then share nintendo gaming with their kids.
Good for you. I have an xbox one too (no PS4 though...sony can fuck off before they ever get a penny from me). My kids by far prefer Nintendo games, as do I. Enjoy what you like or can afford.
Seriously, I'm sure many of you will be happily mocking Nintendo's newest effort. But I think this particular product isn't aimed at virgin gamers living in their mothers' basements. This product is aimed at families with children. My 7 year old daughter loves to cut up every cardboard box we get and make something out of it. She makes houses, cars, planes, and even a recreation of Wall-e. This sort of stuff is aimed at them. Only now they don't just get to create lifeless box items for their imagination. They can see the mechanics of how steering wheels, pianos, and fishing reels work. The can see the pulley's and cameras driving this stuff. This is engineering for elementary school kids. You want to promote kids getting into STEM fields? Try cultivating their imaginations instead of mocking it.
Quality headphones frequently come with 3.5mm jack as standard with a screw on 1/4" adaptor.
That depends on your definition of "quality headphones".
High ends intended for plugging into a pre-amp have 1/4" plugs because that's what the pre-amps have.
They may or may not come with an adapter, depending on whether most 3.5mm devices can drive them or not. It saves on support calls to not deliver an adapter and get calls from people who can't drive them with their phones or other underpowered devices.
Today I learned that my Sennheiser HD 560 Ovation II headphones are not quality headphones.
Sweet. Thanks. It's only been 5 minutes, and that's already worth +2.
I think that Bitcoin girl is a total slut. It seems like every other day I hear someone new has forked her.
Indeed. One need only look at MP3 and MPEG to see that if you get in early and get your foothold, you're pretty well set even if something free and better comes along.
God damn it. Another asshat website that shows something different when you don't have a google referrer. Sorry about that. The graph showed:
2005 - $11.4 billion revenue
2006 - $10.6b
2007 - $10.3b
2008 - $9.4b
2009 - $7.6b
2010 - $6.0b
2011 - $5.1b
2012 - $4.1b
2013 - $2.3b
2014 - $2.0b
2015 - $1.7b
2016 - $1.5b
Yeah, they only had $1.5 billion in revenue last year and $16 million profit. Poor guys.
Give it time:
https://www.statista.com/stati...
I fear lots of people will get overexposed and end up washed out financially.
Definitely. This might look like cryptocoin's golden hour, but the market is oversaturated. Every ordinary company is trying frame their product in cryptocoin terms, instead of just staying focused on their core product. Companies keep pulling this crap, but it's only a matter of time until they push it too far and investors see that this shit doesn't pan out they way they say it will. Once one or two fail, get ready to watch the speed at which they all shutter.
When I entered the username, "mydlinkBRionyg" (without the quotes), the text box had an "X" in it, saying, "Only administrator users are allowed."
Please tell me their "fix" wasn't a JavaScript block to prevent you from entering the password for that user.
I'm not sure he's talking about that. I think he's referring to the users that were on Windows 7 and/or 8 who got a forced Windows 10 install without any user intervention. There were several stories on slashdot about it.
If it's anything like the last ASUS I owned (a TF101 Transformer) the keyboard will be shit (half the keys will stop working within 12 months) and there'll be a half-dozen dead pixels that, with microscopic examination, turn out to be grass seeds under the glass. How the fuck do grass seeds get inside a screen at the factory?
I came here with the same thoughts. My thought process as I was reading the summary:
"Would You Use a Smartphone-Style Laptop With a Three-Day Battery Life? " Well, yeah that does sound like something I might...."ASUS is claiming"....you know what, I think I changed my mind.
I had a Transformer Prime (the model after your TF101). I had zero problems with the screen or keyboard. On the other hand, the GPS was absolute shit. It wouldn't function unless you had absolute clear line of sight. I mean, even inside my pickup truck, with windows all around, including a sunroof overhead, was not able to acquire a reliable signal. It was so bad, ASUS went as far as creating an obnoxious hardware dongle we could connect to the device. Oh, but you couldn't use the dongle while it was docked to the keyboard. What an absolute joke. The wifi was also pretty damn poor with terrible signals and disconnects. Most of us stupidly held out because we were led to believe it would be fixed with a software update, but it got to the point that ASUS eventually refused to acknowledge there was a problem any more. There were so many customers upset about this device, Amazon was voluntarily offering 100% refunds, no questions asked, for the device something like 6 or 9 months after sale. You just called them up, told them your problem, and they were instantly saying "yeah, we've had complaints about this. We'll issue you a refund"
Stupid me decided that I loved the form factor so much, I'll just take my refund from Amazon and order the newest model, the ASUS Transformer Infinity. Mostly the same device (and compatible with the old dock I had, which I had not bought from amazon) but HD resolution, and you could see they they redesigned the case so that there was plastic instead of metal over the place where the wifi and GPS antenna was. The hardware on this model seemed great. I was very happy. Performance was super snappy, and it worked flawlessly. Then every single update got slower and slower. And we're not talking the type of slow that you see with your normal cell phone with too many apps installed. After about 1 year it had gotten so bad, I factory reset the device so it was totally clean. Even with nothing additional installed, after boot up ( and give it a minute or 2 to finish booting, but don't start any apps) you would still experience anywhere from 1 to 10 second delays in registering touch screen input. In the span of about a year it became absolutely unusable for anything. The wife an I each had our own with keyboard dock, so that's $1300 down the drain.
Fool me twice, can't get fooled again. FUCK YOU ASUS!!!!
Wow, that was a very well thought out and informative reply. Thank you for enlightening me with your superior knowledge on the subject. I'm just sad that, unlike your previous reply to me, this reply didn't contain any more inaccuracies.
And how many of them have debt because the currency is inflationary? For them, it's better to invest in a house and take on that debt than to have the money sitting around.
Uhhh, considering the average person's "financial intelligence" (there's probably a better term for it that's escaping me right now), I'm pretty sure their level of debt is not a strategic decision. People are in debt because they are careless with spending, don't plan for the future, don't foresee unexpected expenses. And that's WITHOUT having to foresee the effects of decades of deflation on their spending decisions.
When you buy a mortgage, you owe a fixed amount of currency. With inflation, over time your income tends to increase slightly year to year, and over the years the mortgage becomes a smaller and smaller part of your income, making it more and more affordable.
The banks are not morons. They know money is worth less in the future, and their interest rate takes that into account. You're not getting a free ride because your currency is constantly being devalued.
Of course they aren't moron. Of course they figure inflation into it. On the other hand, by comparison, the average person is fairly stupid when it comes to finances. They often can't look 1 or 2 years down the road, much less 10, 20, or 30 years. They can't think about the other things that are going to happen in life, and whether they will continue to be able to afford that payment that seems reasonable today. Having a kid or 2 (possibly by accident), unexpected health complications, having to care for an elderly parent. These are not things most people will take into account when committing to buying a house.
Inflation provides the vast majority of people with a safety net. Without inflation, a decision you make today that seems financially sound might not be such a good idea when you factor in some future unknown expenses. With inflation, the commitment you make today on buying a house isn't such a large factor in 10+ years when that new expense comes up. On the other hand, deflation is the exact opposite. A seemingly financially sound decision today does not remain financially sound 10 years from now even if no new expenses come up. So now, not only does the average person have to prepare for the unexpected, they are required to look 20-30 years down the road and plan for the expected. They have to take 20-30 years of deflation into account and realize what their income is likely to be that far away to decide if they are likely to be able to afford a house. For the vast majority of people, that's asking a hell of a lot.
Maybe you should take a look at wage increases vs. inflation for the past 70 years or so.
In the current system, it 'appears' as if your wage is going up, but it is in fact shrinking.
But in a system built on lies... who wants to hear the truth?
You are actually wrong. It is not shrinking. Over the long run it in increasing very slightly. Over the last few decades it has mostly been stagnant. Any (slight) decrease is only in the shorter term. When we are talking about mortgage affordability we are generally talking about 30 year spans.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se...
But you completely miss the point of my post. Yes inflation adjusted income only changes slightly over time (which is to be expected...cost of all good adjusts to what people are making, otherwise we'd all be living in mansions and driving ferraris). But look at that graphs above and notice the slope of that nominal income line. Now realize that the slope of your nominal mortgage payment over 30 years is zero. Your mortgage payment stays the same every year, while your income grows and grows. Even if that larger income doesn't give you more buying power, it makes your large mortgage debt easier and easier to afford every year.
Now try switching to a deflationary currency. To do that, you just flip the graph upside down. Your real (inflation adjusted) income/buying power stays more or less flat over time, but your nominal income would be sloping down. Buy your mortgage payment would stay flat, and every year get just a little more difficult to afford.