Just like how they assume the best about you when you apply for a mortage and have no credit history because you don't use credit cards, and use a pre-paid phone, etc?
Good luck with that.
On the upside at least, if your someone who doesn't use facebook, you can hire someone to create a profile for you, and have them go around liking 'seatbelts'*1, non-alcoholic beer *2, MADD, Volvo Wagons *3, and making periodic posts saying you will be picking up the milk, bread, cheese, and organic lettuce, at the whole foods*4 at 321 Main Street, at 4:35 pm (*5), unless it is raining*6
You're just not thinking like an insurance company, let me help you:
*1 - Seatbelt == racing harness. Premium increase.
*2 - Likely hiding a drinking problem == Premium increase.
*3 - MADD == Doesn't indicate, Volvo's dont need to be modified with a roll cage for rallying == rally driver - Double premium increase.
*4 - Demonstrates you're willing to spend more for the same product == Premium increase and upsell.
*5 - Demonstrates you shirk work by leaving before 5:30 PM = Lazy and unreliable == Premium increase.
*6 - Lacks confidence driving in the rain == Premium increase.
I remember the good old days, when insurance companies used myspace to set insurance premiums.
Now get off my lawn!
I remember the days when my driving record set my premium!
*sigh* This is for new drivers.
Everyone here may think this is entirely stupid, but 17/18 year olds in the UK who have just passed their test pay very high premiums because there is a high accident rate with this age group. As a parent I'd be quite glad of a way to pay GBP500 rather than GBP2000 (or whatever) for my kid's first year of insurance.
I moved to the UK from Australia earlier this year. Its not just young people.
I went from paying A$900 (GBP 450) to insure a Nissan 200sx (S15) modified* to paying GBP 650 for a bog standard Z4 3.0. No at fault accidents ever, 1 write off (rear ended whilst stationary) no traffic infringements. Its not even the type of car, the cheapest quote I got was for a Seat Leon and that was still upwards GBP 500.
The insurance industry needs to be reigned in, in the UK and strictly regulated. Then again, the UK Govt gets a fat cut in the form of insurance tax from all our premiums so they're not in a hurry to do anything like that.
*Modified to 300 BHP, larger turbo, coilovers, the lot. To add insult to injury, it's one of the most stolen car models in Australia.
I remember the good old days, when insurance companies used myspace to set insurance premiums.
Now get off my lawn!
I remember the days when my driving record set my premium!
The problem is, driving records dont demonstrate you're a good driver. It is entirely possible that you've got a clean record but are a terrible driver and the only reason you haven't had a crash is because other driver are looking out for you.
What I want is a simple accelerator attached to the indicator. The device records constantly but only saves the last 5 seconds before and after a change in direction. Those consistently failing to indicate get their premiums doubled, those using them as confirmicators get their premiums tripled.
I usually find that people who fail to indicate or indicate after they turn have other bad driving habits. The cause is usually the same, laziness, ignorance and a solid belief that because they've been driving since 19-dickety-2 they're the best driver in the world (usually whilst hogging lane 2 and alternates between having one wheel in lane 1 or 3).
Both are going to be terrible. We're now arguing over which one we're more likely to survive four years of. Saying that one is evil and the other one is perfectly find and upstanding is just short sighted. This is not a sports event, so don't treat it like My Team Rules versus Your Team Sucks.
The thing is, the worst thing you can say about Hillary is that she'll be a lame duck that occupied an office and stole oxygen.
The best thing you can say about Trump is that he'll be a lame duck who occupied an office and stole oxygen.
Whats even worse is that the above is the most likely scenario for Clinton and the least likely scenario for Trump.
This is dead on arrival, as Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers. They might attract casual Facebook gamers, Farmville and the like, but they already have these.
I think that is the audience FB are trying to get. Those who want to bother other people with their Fruit Quest bollocks. Happy for that kind of nonsense and gamer to stay restricted to FB.
PC Gamers have had such a glowing response to EA's Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay.
This. I've pretty much stopped buying EA and Ubisoft games because I cant get them without Origin or Uplay.
To beat Steam, you have to be better than Steam. If you exclude steam and try to force people onto your own crappy platform you'll just drive more people to piracy.
I usually try GOG first, especially for Indie games, but Steam is a useful, non-intrusive platform that hasn't screwed up on me in years... Unlike Origin that decided to delete my games and force me to re-download them (this is why I uninstalled it and never went back).
It's still spam even when the government does it. This is no more moral than a Nigerian Prince scam.
Its not the government doing it in this case. Its just the Law turning a blind eye to it.
The "notices" are being sent out by a private corporation working on behalf of "rights holders" (media conglomerates in other words). It is called "speculative invoicing" in corporate newspeak and basically works on the same principle as the the Nigerian Prince Scam. Send out dozens of letters at a few pence each, hope that someone takes the bait for a few hundred pounds. Easy money when you make it look official and the cops wont bother you over it.
This is the kind of thing that the Australian courts shut down pretty quick and why we should remember the name, Justice Nye Perram. He was the first judge to stand up against this kind of thuggery.
Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.
This, Trump becomes white noise to everyone outside his own echo chamber. He'll be unceremoniously dumped by the Republicans and squarely blamed for their failure so all he'll be able to do is call Clinton names... which seems to be all he's done for his entire election campaign.
He could probably get his own show on Fox News. The Trump Truth or some such but beyond that he'll be easier to ignore than a crazy person with a doomsday sign in Times Square.
I'm kind of hoping that Trump wins as I'm planning a trip there next year... I'd like to see the USD drop against the sagging AUD and plummeting Pound.
In addition to those who perpetuated the scam, I feel that since the Thune, India police know the low-level employees who actually spoke from the scripts, I'd love to see the US indict those people, have them beg their families for Rupees to fight extradition in an Indian court, lose that fight,
Sounds like you're not familiar with India. They will have to pay a very small amount of Rupees not to be found by police whilst the US will have to pay a very large amount of Rupees for the police not to find them.
Secondly, there's a billion Indians, the US will run out of money three times over before they run out of volunteers.
Thirdly, the scammers will just move to another country where the US has no clout and the process will start all over again.
This is not fight you can win through legal battles, its a fight against stupidity in the US, not against poor people in India. The only way you can fight it is to educate people.
I agree. I don't even usually pay in cash and my credit card offers me the luxury of spending way more cash than I would ever like to carry around, but $300 is about right. If for some reason my credit card stops working or I lose it (both of which have happened to me before), $300 should be more than enough to see me through to whenever I can fix it.
Allowing you to spend more money than you have is the entire point of CC's.
Now I've moved to the UK, I'm quickly running out of reasons to use a credit card. if I want to buy a car, Faster Payments via my bank account is cheaper and instant. My basic debit card has a spending limit of however much I have in my account.. The only reason I still have a credit card is for deposits when renting a car or getting a hotel room, even then I just pay on my debit card.
Between cash for small transactions, debit for larger ones and instant bank transfers for thousands of pounds worth... I'm covered.
I couldn't get rid of cash even if I wanted to, too many things I do depend on it. If I want to park, more often than not I need a pound coin or 3 (a lot of parking in the UK is paid, I much prefer the validation system that is commonplace in the US), coin op laundries, buying a drink or a bit of food (especially from a street or van vendor). I cant imagine how much trouble people have to go to in order to be "cash free"... and given how much they mention it, "I've gone cashless" is the 2016 version of "I dont even own a TV".
BTW. I do own a TV, even though I rarely watch it.
Oh right, the summary says he only makes most of his purchases with Apple Pay.
The only people I know who even use Apple pay are hopeless Apple fanboys. Apple pay is just a wrapper for a credit card, which is why they have the same limitations as other forms of contactless transactions, which means it's easier just to whip out the plastic if you have an allergy to coins, notes and low prices.
I lost a bag on a JetBlue flight to Oakland because I checked the bag but ended up missing my flight. I caught the next flight and when I arrived in Oakland, my bag was nowhere to be found.
I thought they instituted a rule that your bags had to be on the same flight as you. The concept being that you couldn't check your bag full of explosives and then wander away from the airport. You had to be dedicated enough to die for your cause...
Whatever happened to that?
Tight turnaround schedules based on tight arse consumers is what happened.
Also, how do you miss a flight after checking in? The airport calls your name. Whenever you hear an announcement saying "Mr and Mrs Dumfuk please make yourself known to airport staff" it's because 300 people are sitting at the gate waiting for 2 passengers who are too dumb to know how to get on an airplane.
How things have changed. In the 90's I went to a startup (sw) and we had offices, all of us. The company we left had switched from offices to cubicles. And in keeping with true PHB mentality, the prior company had taken a poll if we wanted to stay in offices or switch to cubes. They pinky-swear promised they would do what the employees wanted. Of course the employees overwhelmingly voted for offices and when the results came in, the PHB's said we "know" you really wanted cubes, soo they went to cubes.
And in the 00's the company decided to switch from cubes to open plan... and everyone realised how much they missed the privacy that cubicles provided.
In particular, the ability to have extensions on the mobile app is a major advantage.
Its been a while since I looked at Firefox for Android. Nice to see uBlock in there.
However I switched to Ghostery browser a while ago and haven't looked back. Still, good to have Firefox as an alternative.
So I took a loss on the value of my trade in when I bought the VW thinking I'd have a solid 200k mi vehicle that would last me 10+ years
There's your first mistake. VAG cars are notorious for surviving the warranty period and not much after. Especially the diesels which have a bad tendency to blow injectors and turbos... often one after the other. The injector/turbo issues are competing with the DSG (Transmission) to determine which goes first and to be fair, the petrols have the same problem with blown trannies.
This is doing you a favour, there is no way you'd get a solid 100,000 or 5 years out of an automatic VW diesel. There's a reason so many of them are scrapped after just 3 to 5 years here in the UK. They aren't worth fixing up enough to pass a MOT.
Save up a bit of cash and buy a Toyota Corolla. Sure they're boring but it'll easily last 1/2 a million miles if given the most basic of oil changes 1000 miles past due. If you cant afford one new, get an old one as they last for donkeys years.
Theres a big difference between "helping" and "saving". Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of. For example there were literally 10x more Russian armies when Germany surrended. The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
Please dont tell me bullshit about LL. LL was arranged in late 41, just a few months later Russia won the biggest fight in history, involving about 4 -5 million soldiers - the battle of Stalingrad. That was the start of the end of the NAZIS. Befor eyou jump... theres no way anythign got thru to Russia by the time of Stalingrad.
Stop you hubris. America would not have landed in Europe without the UK as well, just like the UK would have had serious problems without its friends like Canada and the rest of Empire helping it from day one.
Russia won by blood and guts, but they wouldn't have won if not for the allies. Stalin constantly petitioned the US and UK for a second front and even when Italy was invaded he still demanded more.
Russia won by blood and guts,
The western allies won by guile and intelligence. That's why we got half of Europe.
But the truth is, Hitler was our biggest ally. Without his stupidity, Russia would have been swept aside. We didn't win the war as much as the Axis lost it.
The Soviet leadership were dumb as bricks. Their strategy consisted of building up huge numbers and overwhelming German positions. They never changed this strategy. They never had to as Hitler had refused to allow the German armies to retreat. As such, armies were cut off by the hundreds of thousands with 300,000 troops trapped in the Crimea alone as the Russians bypassed the region. Hitler had to defend a 1000 mile line across Russia, if he had of fallen back to more defensible line or even just a smaller one it would have given the Germans the edge over the Russians just by shortening their supply lines and lengthening the Russians.
The Germans had superior training, equipment, officers and more experience. Half the reason the Russians lost so many people is because they ordered them to run into German guns until they ran out of ammo. As Winston Churchill siad, "Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter", the Russians used very little manoeuvre.
Against a competent leader... Like Montgomery, let alone Eisenhower... The Russians would not have stood a chance.
Countries that want to grow and have large economies are nearly all democratic, with open trade policies. The exceptions are Russia and China. China has focused more on trade than weapons and their economy has grow.
You need global trade to go forward without you are limited in what you can do.
China is pretty much near anarchistic capitalism. You can get out of most crimes and skirt most laws with the application of money or products of value to officials. Granted, the bigger the violation the more money you need to pay. Only the most serious crimes are enforced and to be fair, they are enforced equally. A party big wig can be executed for selling contaminated milk as readily as a dirt farmer.
Russia is as corrupt, but the wealth is more centralised so the the average Iosif cant afford to bribe the NKVD as much. Also being an oligarch in Russia makes you untouchable.
But Russia's economy is terrible compared to China's or the west due to the concentration of wealth. India would be a better example.
TFA is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Not the first, not the biggest, not the most difficult.
Read this instead http://qz.com/656104/a-fleet-o...
A week of driving, trucks from several manufacturers, 2000 km Stockholm to Rotterdam across 4 borders.
Uber don't have a clue what they are up against. 120 miles? F**king amateurs.
Yes, but this is Uber, posterboy of publicity. Because it's Uber it's new and fresh (regardless of how many people have done it before).
My question is, did they sell the pisswater (sorry, as a UK resident it is against the law to call Budweiser a beer) for $2 a bottle off the street and call it "beverage sharing".
The entire point of car insurance is to make humans worth suing.
Actually the point of car insurance is to make sure you can afford to fix or replace my car when you hit it.
Large underwriters with throngs of lawyers they keep deliberately chained and underfed to increase their viciousness actually decrease the likelihood you'll win a law suit.
Apple of 2001 made computers.
Apple of 2016 makes phones. The fact that they're now making fewer phones just means the phone market is maturing as the computer market matured. The real question can the revolutionize yet another industry? Steve Jobs? Perhaps. He was smarter than me so maybe he could've come up with something.
Not an Apple fan in general but now I feel a bit sad.
I've said it before, but most of Apple's customers are already Apple customers. 4 out of every 5 iphones is sold to replace an iphone.
They stopped growing a while ago in existing markets and have run out of new markets to join, they would have started shrinking years ago if they hadn't of started out in the China and India markets. Now that they've been everywhere for a few years their sales are dropping because they've become passe. There are now more people leaving Apple than joining it. All but the most ardent Apple fanboys I know have pretty much admitted that they don't find any differences between Apple and Android these days. The only thing keeping them on Apple are contracts, momentum and vendor lock in.
I've said it before and I will say it again: Without Jobs Apple is toast. Just like the last time Jobs left. They will continue for some years due to momentum but there is no stopping their fall. Without Jobs they are rudderless.
They were rudderless with Jobs, they just cant hide it under the RDF any more.
Apple fanboys bang on about the UI, but it's positively horrible. I have two phones, a Nexus 5x on Android 7 (Nougat) and a Galaxy Nexus on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). I had to use an Ipad at a bank recently, brand new, latest model Ipad on the latest IOS and using the keyboard was like going back to Android 1.1. It was positively in the dark ages. No tab key, no long press options, numbers were a pain in the backside to get to (UK post codes, nuff said) and this is comparing it against the Android 4.3 keyboard. Andriod 6 introduced a numpad option which is great for putting in long strings of numbers like telephone or account numbers.
That was just the keyboard. I watched the account manager at the bank fumble with it and he uses it every day.
How many terror attacks can you link to freedom of movement?
I believe the last two were attributed to people born in the UK. I think it would be the same with the one they arrested for the London City Airport attack on the 20th given the Rozzers have released him on bail. Flight risks stay in one of Her Majesties finest institutions until trial.
And if the Brits had enough of it, how come so many Brexiteers were hanging on to the hope of remaining in the ECC
Exit won by a narrow margin. Much narrower than the Brexiters like to admit. They think that Europe is going to bow down to British demands when it's the other way around. May was quite smart when she put three well known Outers in the three key Brexit positions because they'll take the fall for the brexit failure whilst May can walk away smelling like roses.
For some people this bubble will never be burst, but for most it already has and there is a huge amount of Bregret at the moment. If a general election was called tomorrow, any party standing on a Brexit platform would be massacred at the polls. Even UKIP has pretty much self destructed, now that there is no collective Europe to hate they've all turned on each other.
Frankly, I think Brexit was just an episode of national pique, and I suspect if you reran the referendum now, with at least some of the ramifications becoming clear (such as Norway objecting to continued British membership in the ECC), Remain would have a solid win.
100% correct there. Only 2% of those who voted leave need to have changed their minds.
Okay, your imports cost more, so you should buy British stuff to have it cost the same. As an added bonus, your product will be cheaper than imports, making you more competitive......
Erm, you should have just wrote "I know nothing about economics" because that is effectively what you said.
This is my second favourite incorrect argument.
It is incorrect because new industries do not spring up just because things become more expensive due to the logistics and economies of scale. When you invest in new infrastructure you need a reasonable expectation you will get a return on your investment, selling low margin/high volume items exclusively to an impoverished nation is not conducive to an acceptable ROI.
Secondly, you wont be able to make most things cheaper than you can import them for because you have to pay for raw materials. If you want to build nails in the UK, you need to import the steel. An entire steel working ecosystem is not going to spring up to support a few nail manufacturers.
Thirdly, the UK is an advanced nation with high wages, wages will need to increase to maintain the same quality of life. Likely scenario is that the quality of life drops a little whilst wages increase a little. This means higher costs for manufacturing. As the UK is one of the worlds most advanced nations, we cant sell the widgets we make to other, richer countries because there aren't any, so any widgets made in the UK need to be affordable to the people who make them (Paging Henry Ford, Mr Ford to the white courtesy phone please). If it is not feasible to build your widgets in good economic times in the UK, it sure as shit is not feasible to do it in bad economic times.
So no new industries are going to pop up, things we import will become more expensive whilst fewer people will buy what we export because we've made an enemy of our largest trading partner... Just look at what is happening to Russia. It could be as bad as Russia because we haven't got eastern Europe by the short and curlies with out gas.
Every time a brexiter in denial with "oh they're just using brexit as an excuse".
No, you dumb bastard
My favourite incorrect justification is "its just a currency fluctuation"
No it isn't, fluctuations go up and down by a few pence over the dollar, a drop by 20% is a big mother fucking drop, not a fluctuation.
A 20% drop in the pound is a 20% increase in the cost of everything you buy compounded by the fact that it's now 20% more to transport. The rise in the cost of fuel alone will do that.
Just as investment in the UK in general is now not so attractive,
Forget new investment, we're not even going to keep the investment we have. Why would Honda keep making the Civic in Swindon if they have to pay the import tax in the EU... They'll just import them from Thailand where it's cheaper to make them and close the Swindon factory. Same for all other major manufacturers, Ford, Vauxhall (GM), Nissan, Toyota. Even Aston Martin and JLR are foreign owned. The UK car industry has a real chance of being reduced to 5 guys in a shed in Leicestershire in a few years.
This part of the market is owned by existing companies, Fitbit, Garmin and others who got into the market 5 years ago.
I'm guessing the likes of Fitbit were left out of the "smartwatch" category because they'd make the Iwatch sales look tiny.
Failed experiment by electronics makers selling jewellery. They fell into the classic trap of trying to create a market for something which doesn't actually do anything that anyone cares about.
This, smartwaches were a problem looking for a solution.
Even when it works its awful. The 2nd row is short on room. The 3rd row is tiny. And you cannot fold the 2nd row seats so even if you fold the 3rd row down you can't fit a bike in it.
This is a case of Tesla not knowing its audience. The only people who want electric SUV's are middle aged, hipster-infused peddling pillocks who first insist on blocking the road with their oversized car, then on slowing the traffic with their bikes (who insist they must never use a path or permit any motorist to pass).
Tesla should have partnered with BRAKE in the UK, put bike racks in as standard (on the back as they cause scratches in car parks) limited the speed to 40 MPH and used those ugly side panels from a Citroen Cactus.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like how they assume the best about you when you apply for a mortage and have no credit history because you don't use credit cards, and use a pre-paid phone, etc?
Good luck with that.
On the upside at least, if your someone who doesn't use facebook, you can hire someone to create a profile for you, and have them go around liking 'seatbelts'*1, non-alcoholic beer *2, MADD, Volvo Wagons *3, and making periodic posts saying you will be picking up the milk, bread, cheese, and organic lettuce, at the whole foods*4 at 321 Main Street, at 4:35 pm (*5), unless it is raining*6
You're just not thinking like an insurance company, let me help you:
*1 - Seatbelt == racing harness. Premium increase.
*2 - Likely hiding a drinking problem == Premium increase.
*3 - MADD == Doesn't indicate, Volvo's dont need to be modified with a roll cage for rallying == rally driver - Double premium increase.
*4 - Demonstrates you're willing to spend more for the same product == Premium increase and upsell.
*5 - Demonstrates you shirk work by leaving before 5:30 PM = Lazy and unreliable == Premium increase.
*6 - Lacks confidence driving in the rain == Premium increase.
I remember the good old days, when insurance companies used myspace to set insurance premiums.
Now get off my lawn!
I remember the days when my driving record set my premium!
*sigh* This is for new drivers.
Everyone here may think this is entirely stupid, but 17/18 year olds in the UK who have just passed their test pay very high premiums because there is a high accident rate with this age group. As a parent I'd be quite glad of a way to pay GBP500 rather than GBP2000 (or whatever) for my kid's first year of insurance.
I moved to the UK from Australia earlier this year. Its not just young people.
I went from paying A$900 (GBP 450) to insure a Nissan 200sx (S15) modified* to paying GBP 650 for a bog standard Z4 3.0. No at fault accidents ever, 1 write off (rear ended whilst stationary) no traffic infringements. Its not even the type of car, the cheapest quote I got was for a Seat Leon and that was still upwards GBP 500.
The insurance industry needs to be reigned in, in the UK and strictly regulated. Then again, the UK Govt gets a fat cut in the form of insurance tax from all our premiums so they're not in a hurry to do anything like that.
*Modified to 300 BHP, larger turbo, coilovers, the lot. To add insult to injury, it's one of the most stolen car models in Australia.
I remember the good old days, when insurance companies used myspace to set insurance premiums.
Now get off my lawn!
I remember the days when my driving record set my premium!
The problem is, driving records dont demonstrate you're a good driver. It is entirely possible that you've got a clean record but are a terrible driver and the only reason you haven't had a crash is because other driver are looking out for you.
What I want is a simple accelerator attached to the indicator. The device records constantly but only saves the last 5 seconds before and after a change in direction. Those consistently failing to indicate get their premiums doubled, those using them as confirmicators get their premiums tripled.
I usually find that people who fail to indicate or indicate after they turn have other bad driving habits. The cause is usually the same, laziness, ignorance and a solid belief that because they've been driving since 19-dickety-2 they're the best driver in the world (usually whilst hogging lane 2 and alternates between having one wheel in lane 1 or 3).
Both are going to be terrible. We're now arguing over which one we're more likely to survive four years of. Saying that one is evil and the other one is perfectly find and upstanding is just short sighted. This is not a sports event, so don't treat it like My Team Rules versus Your Team Sucks.
The thing is, the worst thing you can say about Hillary is that she'll be a lame duck that occupied an office and stole oxygen.
The best thing you can say about Trump is that he'll be a lame duck who occupied an office and stole oxygen.
Whats even worse is that the above is the most likely scenario for Clinton and the least likely scenario for Trump.
This is dead on arrival, as Facebook is poisoned brand with gamers. They might attract casual Facebook gamers, Farmville and the like, but they already have these.
I think that is the audience FB are trying to get. Those who want to bother other people with their Fruit Quest bollocks. Happy for that kind of nonsense and gamer to stay restricted to FB.
PC Gamers have had such a glowing response to EA's Origin and Ubisoft's UPlay.
This. I've pretty much stopped buying EA and Ubisoft games because I cant get them without Origin or Uplay.
To beat Steam, you have to be better than Steam. If you exclude steam and try to force people onto your own crappy platform you'll just drive more people to piracy.
I usually try GOG first, especially for Indie games, but Steam is a useful, non-intrusive platform that hasn't screwed up on me in years... Unlike Origin that decided to delete my games and force me to re-download them (this is why I uninstalled it and never went back).
It's still spam even when the government does it. This is no more moral than a Nigerian Prince scam.
Its not the government doing it in this case. Its just the Law turning a blind eye to it.
The "notices" are being sent out by a private corporation working on behalf of "rights holders" (media conglomerates in other words). It is called "speculative invoicing" in corporate newspeak and basically works on the same principle as the the Nigerian Prince Scam. Send out dozens of letters at a few pence each, hope that someone takes the bait for a few hundred pounds. Easy money when you make it look official and the cops wont bother you over it.
This is the kind of thing that the Australian courts shut down pretty quick and why we should remember the name, Justice Nye Perram. He was the first judge to stand up against this kind of thuggery.
Problem is Trump won't go away post-election. If he wins it will be worse than this, and if he loses he starts Trump media and doubles down on the loose talk and continual lies.
This, Trump becomes white noise to everyone outside his own echo chamber. He'll be unceremoniously dumped by the Republicans and squarely blamed for their failure so all he'll be able to do is call Clinton names... which seems to be all he's done for his entire election campaign.
He could probably get his own show on Fox News. The Trump Truth or some such but beyond that he'll be easier to ignore than a crazy person with a doomsday sign in Times Square.
I'm kind of hoping that Trump wins as I'm planning a trip there next year... I'd like to see the USD drop against the sagging AUD and plummeting Pound.
In addition to those who perpetuated the scam, I feel that since the Thune, India police know the low-level employees who actually spoke from the scripts, I'd love to see the US indict those people, have them beg their families for Rupees to fight extradition in an Indian court, lose that fight,
Sounds like you're not familiar with India. They will have to pay a very small amount of Rupees not to be found by police whilst the US will have to pay a very large amount of Rupees for the police not to find them.
Secondly, there's a billion Indians, the US will run out of money three times over before they run out of volunteers.
Thirdly, the scammers will just move to another country where the US has no clout and the process will start all over again.
This is not fight you can win through legal battles, its a fight against stupidity in the US, not against poor people in India. The only way you can fight it is to educate people.
I agree. I don't even usually pay in cash and my credit card offers me the luxury of spending way more cash than I would ever like to carry around, but $300 is about right. If for some reason my credit card stops working or I lose it (both of which have happened to me before), $300 should be more than enough to see me through to whenever I can fix it.
Allowing you to spend more money than you have is the entire point of CC's.
Now I've moved to the UK, I'm quickly running out of reasons to use a credit card. if I want to buy a car, Faster Payments via my bank account is cheaper and instant. My basic debit card has a spending limit of however much I have in my account.. The only reason I still have a credit card is for deposits when renting a car or getting a hotel room, even then I just pay on my debit card.
Between cash for small transactions, debit for larger ones and instant bank transfers for thousands of pounds worth... I'm covered.
I couldn't get rid of cash even if I wanted to, too many things I do depend on it. If I want to park, more often than not I need a pound coin or 3 (a lot of parking in the UK is paid, I much prefer the validation system that is commonplace in the US), coin op laundries, buying a drink or a bit of food (especially from a street or van vendor). I cant imagine how much trouble people have to go to in order to be "cash free"... and given how much they mention it, "I've gone cashless" is the 2016 version of "I dont even own a TV".
BTW. I do own a TV, even though I rarely watch it.
Oh right, the summary says he only makes most of his purchases with Apple Pay.
The only people I know who even use Apple pay are hopeless Apple fanboys. Apple pay is just a wrapper for a credit card, which is why they have the same limitations as other forms of contactless transactions, which means it's easier just to whip out the plastic if you have an allergy to coins, notes and low prices.
Actually, I've wondered about this...
I lost a bag on a JetBlue flight to Oakland because I checked the bag but ended up missing my flight. I caught the next flight and when I arrived in Oakland, my bag was nowhere to be found.
I thought they instituted a rule that your bags had to be on the same flight as you. The concept being that you couldn't check your bag full of explosives and then wander away from the airport. You had to be dedicated enough to die for your cause...
Whatever happened to that?
Tight turnaround schedules based on tight arse consumers is what happened.
Also, how do you miss a flight after checking in? The airport calls your name. Whenever you hear an announcement saying "Mr and Mrs Dumfuk please make yourself known to airport staff" it's because 300 people are sitting at the gate waiting for 2 passengers who are too dumb to know how to get on an airplane.
How things have changed. In the 90's I went to a startup (sw) and we had offices, all of us. The company we left had switched from offices to cubicles. And in keeping with true PHB mentality, the prior company had taken a poll if we wanted to stay in offices or switch to cubes. They pinky-swear promised they would do what the employees wanted. Of course the employees overwhelmingly voted for offices and when the results came in, the PHB's said we "know" you really wanted cubes, soo they went to cubes.
And in the 00's the company decided to switch from cubes to open plan... and everyone realised how much they missed the privacy that cubicles provided.
In particular, the ability to have extensions on the mobile app is a major advantage.
Its been a while since I looked at Firefox for Android. Nice to see uBlock in there. However I switched to Ghostery browser a while ago and haven't looked back. Still, good to have Firefox as an alternative.
I assume you mean $30,000, not $30.
So I took a loss on the value of my trade in when I bought the VW thinking I'd have a solid 200k mi vehicle that would last me 10+ years
There's your first mistake. VAG cars are notorious for surviving the warranty period and not much after. Especially the diesels which have a bad tendency to blow injectors and turbos... often one after the other. The injector/turbo issues are competing with the DSG (Transmission) to determine which goes first and to be fair, the petrols have the same problem with blown trannies.
This is doing you a favour, there is no way you'd get a solid 100,000 or 5 years out of an automatic VW diesel. There's a reason so many of them are scrapped after just 3 to 5 years here in the UK. They aren't worth fixing up enough to pass a MOT.
Save up a bit of cash and buy a Toyota Corolla. Sure they're boring but it'll easily last 1/2 a million miles if given the most basic of oil changes 1000 miles past due. If you cant afford one new, get an old one as they last for donkeys years.
Theres a big difference between "helping" and "saving". Russia contribute man power and equipment like tanks that the west has no concept of. For example there were literally 10x more Russian armies when Germany surrended. The truth is Russia WON ww2 by blood and guts.
Please dont tell me bullshit about LL. LL was arranged in late 41, just a few months later Russia won the biggest fight in history, involving about 4 -5 million soldiers - the battle of Stalingrad. That was the start of the end of the NAZIS. Befor eyou jump... theres no way anythign got thru to Russia by the time of Stalingrad.
Stop you hubris. America would not have landed in Europe without the UK as well, just like the UK would have had serious problems without its friends like Canada and the rest of Empire helping it from day one.
Russia won by blood and guts, but they wouldn't have won if not for the allies. Stalin constantly petitioned the US and UK for a second front and even when Italy was invaded he still demanded more.
Russia won by blood and guts,
The western allies won by guile and intelligence. That's why we got half of Europe.
But the truth is, Hitler was our biggest ally. Without his stupidity, Russia would have been swept aside. We didn't win the war as much as the Axis lost it.
The Soviet leadership were dumb as bricks. Their strategy consisted of building up huge numbers and overwhelming German positions. They never changed this strategy. They never had to as Hitler had refused to allow the German armies to retreat. As such, armies were cut off by the hundreds of thousands with 300,000 troops trapped in the Crimea alone as the Russians bypassed the region. Hitler had to defend a 1000 mile line across Russia, if he had of fallen back to more defensible line or even just a smaller one it would have given the Germans the edge over the Russians just by shortening their supply lines and lengthening the Russians.
The Germans had superior training, equipment, officers and more experience. Half the reason the Russians lost so many people is because they ordered them to run into German guns until they ran out of ammo. As Winston Churchill siad, "Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre the less he demands in slaughter", the Russians used very little manoeuvre.
Against a competent leader... Like Montgomery, let alone Eisenhower... The Russians would not have stood a chance.
Countries that want to grow and have large economies are nearly all democratic, with open trade policies. The exceptions are Russia and China. China has focused more on trade than weapons and their economy has grow.
You need global trade to go forward without you are limited in what you can do.
China is pretty much near anarchistic capitalism. You can get out of most crimes and skirt most laws with the application of money or products of value to officials. Granted, the bigger the violation the more money you need to pay. Only the most serious crimes are enforced and to be fair, they are enforced equally. A party big wig can be executed for selling contaminated milk as readily as a dirt farmer.
Russia is as corrupt, but the wealth is more centralised so the the average Iosif cant afford to bribe the NKVD as much. Also being an oligarch in Russia makes you untouchable.
But Russia's economy is terrible compared to China's or the west due to the concentration of wealth. India would be a better example.
TFA is just wrong, wrong, wrong. Not the first, not the biggest, not the most difficult. Read this instead http://qz.com/656104/a-fleet-o... A week of driving, trucks from several manufacturers, 2000 km Stockholm to Rotterdam across 4 borders. Uber don't have a clue what they are up against. 120 miles? F**king amateurs.
Yes, but this is Uber, posterboy of publicity. Because it's Uber it's new and fresh (regardless of how many people have done it before).
My question is, did they sell the pisswater (sorry, as a UK resident it is against the law to call Budweiser a beer) for $2 a bottle off the street and call it "beverage sharing".
The entire point of car insurance is to make humans worth suing.
Actually the point of car insurance is to make sure you can afford to fix or replace my car when you hit it.
Large underwriters with throngs of lawyers they keep deliberately chained and underfed to increase their viciousness actually decrease the likelihood you'll win a law suit.
Apple of 2001 made computers. Apple of 2016 makes phones. The fact that they're now making fewer phones just means the phone market is maturing as the computer market matured. The real question can the revolutionize yet another industry? Steve Jobs? Perhaps. He was smarter than me so maybe he could've come up with something.
Not an Apple fan in general but now I feel a bit sad.
I've said it before, but most of Apple's customers are already Apple customers. 4 out of every 5 iphones is sold to replace an iphone.
They stopped growing a while ago in existing markets and have run out of new markets to join, they would have started shrinking years ago if they hadn't of started out in the China and India markets. Now that they've been everywhere for a few years their sales are dropping because they've become passe. There are now more people leaving Apple than joining it. All but the most ardent Apple fanboys I know have pretty much admitted that they don't find any differences between Apple and Android these days. The only thing keeping them on Apple are contracts, momentum and vendor lock in.
I've said it before and I will say it again: Without Jobs Apple is toast. Just like the last time Jobs left. They will continue for some years due to momentum but there is no stopping their fall. Without Jobs they are rudderless.
They were rudderless with Jobs, they just cant hide it under the RDF any more.
Apple fanboys bang on about the UI, but it's positively horrible. I have two phones, a Nexus 5x on Android 7 (Nougat) and a Galaxy Nexus on Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean). I had to use an Ipad at a bank recently, brand new, latest model Ipad on the latest IOS and using the keyboard was like going back to Android 1.1. It was positively in the dark ages. No tab key, no long press options, numbers were a pain in the backside to get to (UK post codes, nuff said) and this is comparing it against the Android 4.3 keyboard. Andriod 6 introduced a numpad option which is great for putting in long strings of numbers like telephone or account numbers.
That was just the keyboard. I watched the account manager at the bank fumble with it and he uses it every day.
I believe the last two were attributed to people born in the UK. I think it would be the same with the one they arrested for the London City Airport attack on the 20th given the Rozzers have released him on bail. Flight risks stay in one of Her Majesties finest institutions until trial.
Exit won by a narrow margin. Much narrower than the Brexiters like to admit. They think that Europe is going to bow down to British demands when it's the other way around. May was quite smart when she put three well known Outers in the three key Brexit positions because they'll take the fall for the brexit failure whilst May can walk away smelling like roses.
For some people this bubble will never be burst, but for most it already has and there is a huge amount of Bregret at the moment. If a general election was called tomorrow, any party standing on a Brexit platform would be massacred at the polls. Even UKIP has pretty much self destructed, now that there is no collective Europe to hate they've all turned on each other.
Frankly, I think Brexit was just an episode of national pique, and I suspect if you reran the referendum now, with at least some of the ramifications becoming clear (such as Norway objecting to continued British membership in the ECC), Remain would have a solid win.
100% correct there. Only 2% of those who voted leave need to have changed their minds.
Okay, your imports cost more, so you should buy British stuff to have it cost the same. As an added bonus, your product will be cheaper than imports, making you more competitive......
Erm, you should have just wrote "I know nothing about economics" because that is effectively what you said.
This is my second favourite incorrect argument.
It is incorrect because new industries do not spring up just because things become more expensive due to the logistics and economies of scale. When you invest in new infrastructure you need a reasonable expectation you will get a return on your investment, selling low margin/high volume items exclusively to an impoverished nation is not conducive to an acceptable ROI.
Secondly, you wont be able to make most things cheaper than you can import them for because you have to pay for raw materials. If you want to build nails in the UK, you need to import the steel. An entire steel working ecosystem is not going to spring up to support a few nail manufacturers.
Thirdly, the UK is an advanced nation with high wages, wages will need to increase to maintain the same quality of life. Likely scenario is that the quality of life drops a little whilst wages increase a little. This means higher costs for manufacturing. As the UK is one of the worlds most advanced nations, we cant sell the widgets we make to other, richer countries because there aren't any, so any widgets made in the UK need to be affordable to the people who make them (Paging Henry Ford, Mr Ford to the white courtesy phone please). If it is not feasible to build your widgets in good economic times in the UK, it sure as shit is not feasible to do it in bad economic times.
So no new industries are going to pop up, things we import will become more expensive whilst fewer people will buy what we export because we've made an enemy of our largest trading partner... Just look at what is happening to Russia. It could be as bad as Russia because we haven't got eastern Europe by the short and curlies with out gas.
Every time a brexiter in denial with "oh they're just using brexit as an excuse".
No, you dumb bastard
My favourite incorrect justification is "its just a currency fluctuation"
No it isn't, fluctuations go up and down by a few pence over the dollar, a drop by 20% is a big mother fucking drop, not a fluctuation.
A 20% drop in the pound is a 20% increase in the cost of everything you buy compounded by the fact that it's now 20% more to transport. The rise in the cost of fuel alone will do that.
Just as investment in the UK in general is now not so attractive,
Forget new investment, we're not even going to keep the investment we have. Why would Honda keep making the Civic in Swindon if they have to pay the import tax in the EU... They'll just import them from Thailand where it's cheaper to make them and close the Swindon factory. Same for all other major manufacturers, Ford, Vauxhall (GM), Nissan, Toyota. Even Aston Martin and JLR are foreign owned. The UK car industry has a real chance of being reduced to 5 guys in a shed in Leicestershire in a few years.
This part of the market is owned by existing companies, Fitbit, Garmin and others who got into the market 5 years ago.
I'm guessing the likes of Fitbit were left out of the "smartwatch" category because they'd make the Iwatch sales look tiny.
This, smartwaches were a problem looking for a solution.
Even when it works its awful. The 2nd row is short on room. The 3rd row is tiny. And you cannot fold the 2nd row seats so even if you fold the 3rd row down you can't fit a bike in it.
This is a case of Tesla not knowing its audience. The only people who want electric SUV's are middle aged, hipster-infused peddling pillocks who first insist on blocking the road with their oversized car, then on slowing the traffic with their bikes (who insist they must never use a path or permit any motorist to pass).
Tesla should have partnered with BRAKE in the UK, put bike racks in as standard (on the back as they cause scratches in car parks) limited the speed to 40 MPH and used those ugly side panels from a Citroen Cactus.