$ V=nada echo "x${V}x"
xx346 karma · joined June 5, 2009
$ V=nada echo "x${V}x"
xxAnyway, I'm perfectly happy with my Pixel 5 (aside from slightly declining battery performance, it's "as good as new"); I even bought a "excellent" refurb'd Pixel 5 9 months ago to use on a second/backup line (I was also thinking to use one or both for anticipated trade-in's on Pixel 8's, but with nominal updates all in the rearview mirror, Google's trade-in value has declined to negligible, so I plan to just keep using the 5's; the cost of the 8 vs it's value add was not compelling). 8GB RAM and 128GB of local storage is plenty for my needs, and I certainly don't want a bigger phone!
Hear hear. The last 10 years of my career I was surrounded by this attitude (about Python); there was literally no possibility of putting a dent in the groupthink and cult-think surrounding Python (because after all, wasn't it "the most popular programming language in the galaxy"?), which eventually became the corporate-ly mandated language for all software development (and that was that). Yet when I retired in late 2021, my employer's minions were still developing almost entirely in Python 2, having half-heartedly put forth multiple parallel Python 3 migration initiatives which had largely come to naught.
/rant
Source: happy user for 3+ years. No affiliation.
If the above describes the prepaid debit card you are referring to, putting myself in eg Google's shoes re your (heavily paraphrased) question:
> why don't certain "global" companies like Google not accept payment for some of their services via prepaid debit?
I'm in business providing a long-term open ended service (cell, ISP, household utility). I want to ensure ongoing receipt of monthly payments for the service I am delivering with minimum hassle to myself and my customer. If I accepted autopay from a prepaid debit card (as I define it above), the card is certain to "run dry" at some point, guaranteeing a need for future intervention in the payment setup, and (unless the consumer is closely monitoring the prepaid card's balance as the months pass, which is unlikely) likely an interruption in the stream of monthly payments, with an associated likelihood of me interrupting service to the customer due to lack of payment (all costing me administrative overhead), resulting in me possibly losing the customer's business for good.
With autopay tied to a bank account, the primary payment risk is insufficient account balance; with autopay tied to a credit card, the risk of insufficient balance is nearly nonexistent; in general, the risk of interruption of payments from these two payment sources is low (vs nearly certain with a prepaid debit card).
What is the benefit to the consumer of using FedNow instead of a credit card when paying for a purchase? Is the merchant planning to add a credit card surcharge, thus the sole "consumer benefit" is avoiding this surcharge?
Bought 22.11: Both sides used a RE Agent. Locked 30 yr fixed rate mortgage at the then-highest rate in at least a decade (7.375%). Put 20% down. The house we bought was the one and only house in the area that I was hoping would go on the market (I had identified it as such perhaps 4 years prior); I had a Zillow "watch" on it, and was doing an initial walkthru of the house within a few hours of getting a "new house on the market" notification email from Zillow). So this was truly a "lightning strikes" situation; we would not have pulled the trigger on any other property, especially at that then-peak interest rate. Also, even though this property is (IMO) very desirable, we were able to ponder whether to go ahead with this buy or not for over a week before making a slightly-below-listing-price offer, with no offers preceding ours. I attribute this lack of competition mostly to the peaking mortgage rates (plus the property price was near the high end of the market). So peaking rates are not bad in all respects.
Our former house was sold 23.02. Both sides used a RE Agent. Our mortgage on this house was 2.625% 30 yr (20% down); the only sad part of this pair of transactions (which happened in SE AZ) was walking away from this mortgage. The buyers' offer was all cash, above listing price (there were others matching this description, all on the first day the house went on the market). We owned this house for 2.5 years, during which it appreciated (after all expenses) 33%, which was much higher than I expected.
I have no affiliation with any of the products I've mentioned above, just a user.
[0] https://thegrizzlylabs.com/enterprise/
[1] NB: my use case does not involve a significant amount of scanning high page count documents.
Walmart: Everstart $180, 4 year "free replacement" warranty.
Napa: house brand $250, Odyssey $371 (both 3 yr warranty)
OReilly: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty)
AutoZone: house brand $250, Optima $290 (both 3 yr warranty)
Yes, Walmart is evil./s
I extrapolate this to be saying "Compared to other named generations, Boomers have much higher per capita needs". How so?
Or are you rather saying the size of the Boomer generation, being enormous, causes them to collectively have "enormous needs"?
[1] https://dirvish.org/ [2] https://github.com/pauldreik/rdfind
After today seeing 4 (customer-less) kiosks scattered across my medium-sized AZ town attempting to give away free cell phones, free tablets, and free cell service (presumably to those who qualify on the basis of need, presumably funded by the Federal Government), and then returning home and reading this thread in which it is frequently claimed that open WiFi is providing more or less the last comm link between homeless people (who evidently have phones but not cell service?) and the wider world and the possibilities it might offer, I find myself wondering "[why] don't the homeless qualify for these free [cell phones and] cell services?" Is this simply an oversight by Federal legislators (i.e. requiring a recipient to have a fixed mailing address (or: documentable proof of poverty?)) If so, why is nobody mentioning a need to agitate to remove the legal requirements preventing those most needing this help to be eligible to receive it? Simply providing free (voice & data providing) SIMs (which the Federal Govt already seems to be willing to provide) to homeless persons should obviate this entire sub-issue? Or would this (essentially handing out SIM's to anyone who asks for one) risk destabilizing the entire for-pay cell-service industry sector?
Public transit is now the cause of the reforming classes,
and the car their villain. The car is the consumer economy
on wheels: atomizing, competitive, inhuman—and implicitly
racist, hiving people off to segregated communities—while
the subway and the train are communal zendos. Good people
ride bicycles and buses; bad people ride in ever-bigger cars.
Another surprise:
People always maintain, similarly, that the big auto
manufacturers killed L.A.’s once efficient public-transit
system, leaving the city at the mercy of polluting and
gridlocked cars. That this is, at best, a very partial
truth does not weaken its claim on our consciousness.
During the time that laptop lived powered off in my closet, I ran Citrix RDP (client on a personal desktop PC) to access a "engineering-owned" (vs corporate IT-owned) desktop PC located "at the office" on which I did 100% of my normal work.
CA voters asked for this kind of class warfare cast into the ever more intrusive laws that rule their everyday lives in ever increasing detail. The only problem is that unfortunately, even if you leave CA, wherever CA leads, most states eventually follow, because of both the "CA voter diaspora" phenomenon and CA shifting the Overton Window in directions that other state bureaucracies can only wait and dream of.
And I've not even commented on the practical "implementation details" you've raised related to the amount of personal information being disclosed to a debatably trustworthy/secure intermediary, and the definitional ambiguity between a "household" and the tax-filing entities that comprise it. I agree with all the points/objections you've raised and could probably think of quite a few more, but it's all moot: this policy is already the law of the land.
"The bill would require the fixed charge to be established on an income-graduated basis, as provided, with no fewer than 3 income thresholds so that low-income ratepayers in each baseline territory would realize a lower average monthly bill without making any changes in usage."
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
How does the Fed lose the ability to increase (or decrease) interest rates? I was under the impression that (ignoring the consequences of doing so), they can set them as they please.
"repairing neglected power equipment": https://www.youtube.com/@jcondon1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5L6TZdy_y0
https://www.ortontransit.info/ full design w/full rationale !!!
Being an (extreme?) introvert with family responsibilities, I never had significant engagement with Meetups or conferences, or a particular need for like-minded people: I'm not much of a joiner.