In my country parking spaces for residential buildings are all underground, outside parking is considered subpar, thanks to the climate. I've seen residential buildings with 3 underground levels, to accommodate all the parking requirements. But in case of 100-unit thing that should not be necessary, one level is enough.
Yes, and it's also funny that they will re-pave the street, and then few months later it turns out that some water pipes need to be replaced, so the freshly re-paved street is torn up again. Then, few months later, new fiber cables needs to be put in the ground, so guess what?. Re-paving becomes one of the best businesses in such town :)
> What better giant finger to that neighbor than selling your multi-acre estate to be replaced by a 30 or 100-unit apartment complex?
You really do not realize how big (or small, rather) apartment complexes are. 100-unit building is the size of 6-7 single family homes (or maybe 3 McMansions), and maybe twice as high. It would barely be noticeable in such neighborhood.
>> I dont think it's surprising that they make trade-offs to support that model. Just think of how many support staff you'd need to support 1.5 billion users!
Google has a shitload of money, they can afford hiring enough staff. Cost is a lame excuse here.
No, it actually makes sense: burn all the oil now, to keep yourself warm in winter, and the future generations will be kept warm by the fact that climate change raises temperatures, so there are no winters anymore :-D
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something but I think the point of Land Value Tax is that it is set based on the value of the things that could be built on that land, not ones that currently are located there.
So, you have a lot of land with a single family home, but you are taxed for it as if 20-unit apartment building was standing there. Which, in the long run, incentivizes you to sell your home to some developer that would actually build such building.
Now you can discuss if that's fair approach, or just a way to force people out of their homes.
> A better problem, some may say, than having a thriving market for stolen laptops.
Some may say that, because having their laptop stolen is a problem they actually experienced. Having your device remain owned by a vendor, who only "licenses" it for you to use opens up a whole new world of problems, some of which average person can't even imagine.
Credentials are not the same as license. For example, software engineers do not need to pass any certification exams to practice software engineering, but companies still look at their education, years of experience, etc... Yes, it would make a recruitment process for doctors longer, as you would have to interview them, ask them questions to verify their medical knowledge, etc., but it is not impossible.
"I am a beautiful and unique snowflake, there aren't really any people like me" is a wrong answer here :) We are not talking about people exactly like you, we're talking about people taking a lot of unnecessary trips just for fun. Some will do that constantly, like you, some will try this for a month or two. Still those travels add up.
Again, I'll take having fun over saving the planet every time, let's just stop pretending that your travels add no carbon emissions.
Seems like Amex Hilton Aspire card is the key here, just not sure how to get one, not living in the US, and having no credit history there. I assume they require some exorbitant income level as well?
Anyway, seems like just getting Diamond status gives you quite a bonus. I'm in this weird situation where I plan to go to US for the next 3-6 months, and I am actually considering living in Hiltons the whole time :)
You know, if there are enough people like you then you can generate a lot of additional demand for flights, and an airline will actually add flights to their schedule to accommodate that. The law of supply and demand still works here.
How do you manage to get 20-25% on Hilton hotels? True, I never accomplished anything more than Silver membership, but I also read the analysis that one Hilton point is worth like 0.6 cent. It takes a while to accumulate even 100.000 points, and then that's worth maybe 1 free night.
I have different take on this: even big American cities have this thing called "suburbs", which give them all a small town feel. Americans have an obsession with living in single family homes, apartment are considered the dwellings of the poor. The only real city in the US is New York :)
> If you truly want to raise the birth rate, at any cost, you would reduce education levels, make people poorer, raise religiosity, and ban contraception and abortive services for not just women but everyone.
I think it is simpler than that: abolish any state-sponsored retirement plans. People used to have a lot of children so that someone could take care of them in their old age. Now that you have retirement savings you have no need for kids anymore.
Most use cases currently served by Apache Spark clusters would run 10x faster on a laptop with fast SSD (Macbook perhaps), and an ad hoc cat/grep/sed pipeline /s
Fat people should not be running anyway. First, it's ineffective for weight loss, second, your extra body mass puts stress on your joints, resulting in injuries. To lose weight you need a diet, not exercise. And if you want to exercise anyway you should ride a bike, not run.
They are also "too big to fall" - any economic sanctions against China would hurt the West equally (if not more) than them. China produces half of everything you buy.
> I never really got the appeal of the Mini, because it wasn't specced much better than a MacBook.
The appeal is in the form factor: you buy Mini, so you can hang it behind your TV using VESA mount, and you use it to watch Netflix on 65" OLED screen. Or you put it in the corner of the room and use it as a home server. You do not use Mini as laptop replacement :) Although I have to say this: Intel NUCs a quarter of the size of Mini, so much better for both the purposes above.
Actually, I know many people who do this: create a temporary email address, register for a Netflix trial, and cancel it after you watched your favorite show. It's not really that much of the hassle, other than having to type in your credit card details when you register.
"Binge watching" is also weapon of Netflix demise: they drop the whole season at once, you watch it in a day or two, and then you forget it, and you never log in to Netflix again for several weeks. HBO dropping one episode at time creates a feeling of anticipation, and gives you a reason to keep your subscription always active, because every couple days there will be something new for you to watch..
You simply cannot. Unless you want to go Richard Stallman path, and work on a laptop from 2008, with only open source software, unable to use Netflix, banking site, etc.
Apple produces iPhones, Goldman Sachs does financial engineering - its Asset Management division, in addition to $1.5T of their own assets, also manages $2.5T of customer's money. If necessary they can use those assets to further their agenda (by investing them in specific industries or companies). That gives them a lot more influence than Apple, which has to use their own cash for everything. That's why they had audacity to say they are doing "God's work" :)
How can you be sure it can? $31T is the current value, but it has only been at this level for maybe a year, after sharp increase during COVID pandemic. It's entirely possible that this debt will bring the US down in the next couple of years - too soon to tell.
Businesses have such cost-cutting ideas all the time, the problem is that most of those ideas involve firing people. If the deal is: "we will fire 20% of staff, but those who remain will get 5% raise" no union will agree to it.