danjayh

A lot of the bazaar style stuff is handled by Amazon through the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) program. For instance, this rather nice ratcheting wrench set:

https://smile.amazon.com/GearWrench-Metric-Flex-Head-Combina...

is fulfilled by Amazon.com, but sold by tooldeals. Tooldeals ships the product to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon handles all of the selling and logistics.

If Amazon were to eliminate the FBA program, their vast product selection would be greatly curtailed.

Amazon is a cluster all-around. They can't keep counterfeits off (I just recently got a 'samsung' battery that would only charge to 80%), and they can't police legit products correctly either. I've seen tons of horror stories from owners of FBA private labels who'v had their products pulled by Amazon for being 'counterfeit' because one of their competitors reported them in an attempt to reduce competition. Takes weeks or months to get your listing restored. And don't even get me started on their review system. I used to review certain subsets of items prolifically, without accepting freebies, but I gave it up. Amazon would regularly pull down my reviews for things they didn't like. For instance, I've had several battery reviews pulled for including a measured capacity (mAh) divided by cost 'value' graph because it implicitly includes pricing information. Give me a break. Know what replaced my well-thought out & researched review? A review from a 5-star shill that shot from 0 helpful to over +1000 overnight (to those of you that have never reviewed on Amazon ... that does NOT happen unless you're cheating).

Amazon's reviews are crap. Amazon's inventory control is crap. Amazon's seller support is crap. The only things they have going for them are good customer service and a near monopoly on online sales.

Walmart, however, also has great customer service, has brick-and-mortar stores that will help you deal with problems, and now has free 2-day shipping. I've been making a conscious effort to do more online shopping there lately, because Amazon needs to feel like they have a little competition.

I find it odd that the corporate research lab is popularly acknowledged to be dead when so many large companies maintain corporate research labs:

http://www.geglobalresearch.com/

http://research.ibm.com/

https://research.google.com/

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/corporate-innovation-labs/ <- a giant list of more labs

...

Now, I will admit that corporate research has tapered off significantly since then, but 'tapered off' and 'dead' are two entirely different things.

You might think 'But wait! the kind of basic physics research that used to be done by Bell is dead'. I counter with two arguments:

- Basic computer science research is an equally valid, equally fundamental thing, and many of the labs listed above conduct it as their primary business

- Basic physics research does still happen. I included GE Global Research at the top of my list because they in particular do a lot of research into materials, chemistry, etc (which will eventually be applied to things like turbine blades, batteries, LEDs, etc.).

I'd like to propose a different option, one that would actually solve a lot of the current problems in the USA ... before posting a response, please read the 'why' section below.

- The government stops guaranteeing student debt to banks

- Students are allowed to declare bankruptcy and discharge their debt after N number of years, if they can prove that they're financially unable to pay & the market will not bear a salary high enough to service their debt for someone with their degree

- (optionally) The government stops subsidizing student loan interest

Why?

- If banks are liable to lose the capital in the loan, they will have incentive to make sure that the money is being spent wisely. This does mean that they'll no longer give out $100k for a hypothetical finger painting degree.

- It's a societal norm that debt can be discharged in bankruptcy if a person has no assets and no income, and student loans shouldn't be straight-up exception. We have to tighten this up a little bit to make sure people don't go to college, default, and then reap all the benefits ... but disallowing bankruptcy entirely seems extreme. Optionally, we could also consider revoking their degree if they default (rough equivalent of repossession of a physical good).

- College is extremely expensive right now because a flood of guaranteed, subsidize money has created fairly inelastic demand -- many students have little price sensitivity. This drives prices up. If loans are harder to get, smaller, and not subsidized, college prices come down.

The big problem with the American system right now is that we've written the educational institutions a blank check. If suddenly we put even a little economic pressure on the system, costs will come down.

Many of these changes couldn't be made retroactive -- loans were given out under a set of conditions agreed upon by all parties, and these determined the amount of the loans, so they shouldn't be changed. These changes could, however, improve things for future generations.

One last note -- as someone who spent 5 years paying off $100k in student loans, and who now makes enough money that I'd be excluded from the 'free' (AKA 'paid by everyone else') tuition plans for my own kids, I do admit that I'm not real excited about that idea. I would be pretty ticked off if I had to pay for my own tuition, my children's tuition, and also everyone else's kids tuition.

I work for your friendly Aviation megacorp producing avionics-related widgets. We are currently transitioning to DO-178C. Fun anecdote: I took a training class on Peach Fuzzer last year & got to hear people from MS, Mozilla, etc. talk about the testing they do on their software. I asked them if they ever had to prove things like worst-case execution time, worst-case stack utilization, perform MC/DC analysis, perform source-to-object analysis, etc., etc. They did not ... and that, my friends, is why avionics software is so damned expensive compared to other software :)

EDIT: And to those of you debating whether all of these rules are necessary and good -- they are; however, they are a subset. We use an internal coding standard that resembles MISRA C but does have some modifications. The only rule of his that we don't do nearly the same way is the 60 line limit. We use code complexity metrics rather than a strict line limit, but it's the same idea.

It's unfortunate that liberal people from California are moving to Texas, Arizona, and North Carolina. It may permanently alter the character of previously desirable areas.

... it's all a matter of perspective ...

Unsure which candidate you're talking about (both?)? They're both equally awful in different ways.

The article also conflates the tax increase with the cost of the plan, which are two entirely separate things. Whether the government immediately raises taxes enough to cover the whole tab or does it at some later point doesn't really matter -- the people will eventually pay (this is also the case for our massive federal debt). In this case, Seattle is covering under a third of the cost with their up-front tax increase, so for the article to suggest that the tax increase should be the number that folks consider is disingenuous at best.

For those who have given up on Engadget (I can't be the only one):

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/bluetooth-5-spec-comi...

The original is better. Can't stand websites that take up 1/3 of my monitor. If I wanted it that narrow, I'd resize my browser.

link?

Had no idea about FATCA. Absolutely insane government overstep. To impose such a costly burden on financial institutions worldwide, to make Americans a liability to those host countries, and all for such little gain ... it boggles the mind. And the fact that it's been in place for 6 years - the Obama administration must have started planning it almost as soon as they came to power, and they've had so much time to see the inefficiency of it and the negative effects, and still they haven't made a move to reverse it. Totally nuts.

I own a saturn Aura (same platform as the Malibu and G6), and I find that the parts are cheap, readily available in aftermarket form, and easy to replace. Yes, I did have to do the wheel bearing ... but it took me an hour and a half, end-to-end. Super easy hub design to repair, and the entire hub cost me $40. I compared prices brand-to-brand for a 2007 Camry, and the camry hubs seem to run about $30 more than the hubs for my '07 Aura.

Anyway, I also wonder if people who prefer certain makes or models are more likely to do their own work, also skewing their reliability data.

What finally made me drop them was when they posted a cartoon of a dude with his pants around his ankles using a fleshlight (or similar) to their front page. IT pros might (legitimately) be reading Engadget at work, and they basically put a giant cartoon porn picture on their front page. The article itself was about the author's personal experience trying a few modern masturbation devices. Seemed inappropriate for the market they're in. Left permanently.

Non-engadget link for those who have given up on them (I can't possibly be the only one):

http://bgr.com/2016/06/09/lenovo-phab2-pro-release-date-pric...

Key takeaway: "Open standards are always going to be inferior to closed ones." This is totally true, but as the author notes, open standards still have their place.

Also, I realize he's mad, but he really needs to expand his expletive vocabulary :)

Fixed:

Canada seems to be in so much trouble - I am wondering how things are there.

# Massive flooring of the Canadian dollar.

# Continued job losses months on end - Unemployment rate of 7.1% !

# Most expensive Natural Disaster in Canadian history.

# They got their Obama.

Chrome has made some pretty major, breaking changes due to auto-updates. I opened Chrome one day to find that my VPN to work would no longer function due to sweeping changes in extension permissions. I would agree with the parent that Chrome's behavior is very similar to what MS is doing now, and probably for similar reasons, except that MS is actually giving warning before they do it. That doesn't make it any more pleasant, but it still will result in a more secure infrastructure.

My employer offers a few options for health insurance. At the time I was a young and healthy 29 year old (or so I thought) so I was enrolled in the low cost high deductible option. It costs less than $200/month between both the employer and employee portion of the contribution for that plan today -- at the time (in 2009), it was less than $150/month, but our costs went up significantly with the advent of Obamacare. Total medical bill came to about $350k, down to $250k with insurance co's negotiate rates, of which I was responsible for approximately $5k. I was sitting on a pile of cashed earmarked for a mortgage downpayment at the time ... so I didn't have to go into debt over it, but even if I had, for most people $5k isn't a bankruptcy event type debt.

(copied from another comment that I posted this in originally by accident)

You consider NHS to be an example of a well run nationalized system, and yet the NHS deals with chronic rationing [0] [1], has queues for many things (and actually lets you pay to jump place in line) [2]. I'd hardly call that efficient or well run - instead, I'd call it symptomatic of central planning. During the 90s and 00s I thought that perhaps China's simultaneous transition from poverty and shortage to (relative) wealth and abundance (which was driven by their transition from state control to capitalism) would have finally put this 'the state could eliminate shortages and give everybody everything' nonsense to rest, but it seems that people have very short memories indeed (or just weren't born yet when the major experiments in nationalization were underway).

To give you a preview of the links, this quote is particularly poignant:

"Rationing is nothing new, of course. When waiting lists stretched to many months and even years, treatment was often rationed simply by the patient dying before they reach the operating table."

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/08/nhs-rationing...

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/apr/24/ra...

[2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3104106/NHS-charge...

EDIT: Disregard 'you consider the NHS...' - got your comment mixed up with somebody elses.

The actual point is that nationalization tends to have mismanagement and shortages as an outcome, and private markets do not (at least not to the same extent). You consider NHS to be an example of a well run nationalized system, and yet the NHS deals with chronic rationing [0] [1], has queues for many things (and actually lets you pay to jump place in line) [2]. I'd hardly call that efficient or well run - instead, I'd call it symptomatic of central planning. W/ regard to people using bidets, cloth diapers, and washclothes - in a system with chronic shortages, people don't have those either. During the 90s and 00s I thought that perhaps China's simultaneous transition from poverty and shortage to (relative) wealth and abundance (which was driven by their transition from state control to capitalism) would have finally put this 'the state could eliminate shortages and give everybody everything' nonsense to rest, but it seems that people have very short memories indeed (or just weren't born yet when the major experiments in nationalization were underway).

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/08/nhs-rationing... [1] http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/apr/24/ra... [2] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3104106/NHS-charge...

Politicians are motivated by power, not by your needs. We have had repeated examples of just how bad states truly are at providing for people's basic needs. Every time it's been tried, it's resulted in chronic shortages, often to the point of starvation. The USSR, Cuba, North Korea, China (before they went capitalist). I'm going to take a wager and say that the days when the USSR was still a major world power were before your time, and if I'm right, I strongly encourage you to do some reading on what it was like for the people who lived in it.

Three words for interesting (relevant) google food: toilet paper USSR. State production does not guarantee a steady supply of essentials.

Having been in A-fib several times in my life, if you ever feel like your heart rate isn't steady and isn't changing in the usual way as a result of exertion, GO TO A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY. Lesson learned. If anyone ever releases a watch that can identify conditions like this with a great deal of specificity and sensitivity, I would consider that far more of a killer app than email notifications on my wrist :).

Disagree. I had a valve replaced, and researched extensively what my experience was like vs. that in other countries. I received an unquestionably higher standard of care. I had my choice of valve, doctor, hospital, I had nearly zero wait (a few weeks from diagnosis to surgery, and only because I asked for the time -- in my circumstance there was a double digit chance of death, and I needed to ... process), and the nursing care that I received after surgery in the ICU was literally one-on-one - there was a nurse assigned to me. I had a bed that massaged and hammered the goop out of my lungs, I had tasty food (when I could eat again), and I had some say in when I would be discharged. The only thing that wasn't absolutely first-class was that I had a shared room with two beds post-ICU, but even that's becoming uncommon in the US.

After reading on the experiences of people from European countries and Canada in the 'OMG I had a valve replaced' forum (yes, there's a site just for that -- valvereplacement.org), the level of care that I received was significantly better than what is typical of public health systems.

Oh, and last week I needed to see the doc for a sore throat, and I was in the same day. Queues are a regular thing in public systems.

Even the world's crappiest healthcare plan protects against the worst case. I know - I had a major health event at age 29, and I had absolutely garbage insurance. $350,000 in hospital bills later, with approximately only $7k out of pocket, I was all fixed up (as well as current medical tech allows, at least) and my heart was a click-click-clicking away. Insurance with deductibles in that range for a single (and ~double that for a family) is really relatively cheap.

Friend, you are more than likely in the top 1% of the world population. That only takes about $32k/year[0].

[0] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615...

My own megacorp (which is mentioned in the article) when to a warm & fuzzy review system some months ago, I don't really like it. They used to do stack ranking behind closed doors (although they vehemently denied it) ... which only bothered me because they didn't tell us where we fell in the stack. Let me know where I stand compared to everyone else in my bracket, that's all I really want.

I had untreated strep when I was a kid, because the strep screen came back negative. Turns out it was group C, which didn't show up on the strep screen, but also didn't resolve itself. Some months later it got much worse. Somebody finally did a culture, figured it out, and gave me antibiotics (which cleared it up). Fast forward to age 29, when I had to have open heart surgery to get a mechanical mitral valve, for which I have to be on warfarin for the rest of my life (which comes packaged with increased risk of stroke and hemorrhage for the rest of my life) along with a beta blocker ('bystolic', aka nebivolol) because something happened to mess up my heart rate regulation during the surgery. I'd call strep pretty serious.

W/ regard to space-based and airborne systems (commercial jets also actually operate in a fairly high radiation environment):

The risk of faults is not only non-zero, it's expected. Google 'single event upset' and 'nor flash soft error. Short version - (SEU) any bit in your RAM, CPU, peripherals, or databus can (and will, eventually) be randomly flipped in a high radiation environment. (Soft Error) - A random cell in your flash may be pushed into an indeterminate voltage range, and will return a different value every time you read it. So, for instance, you may CRC it, think it's good, copy it to RAM, and then the CRC of the RAM copy will fail because you got a different value the second time you read it.

There are ways to deal with this. Google 'lockstep CPU' for information on a common, fairly hardcore approach. Basically you replicate the CPU (and the rest of the hardware) and cross-check every single clock cycle; you essentially have two or more computers in one box doing the work of a single computer.

As you can imagine, this hardware is typically entirely custom, tested more thoroughly than anything you've ever imagined (unless you're in a safety critical industry yourself), and very expensive to design & test. Hardware refresh cycles are typically measured in decades, often governed by component obsolescence.