and probably the reality is much more mundane and boring. usually technical people have absolutely reasonable concerns , yet most of the time they misjudge the cost-benefit ratios.
Are there "technical people" who will volunteer to refactor an Excel monstersheet instead of suggesting a complete rewrite in whatever framework with an ORM?
I can run a broken toilet tank all day long without extra fees, hundreds of gallons. Can turn all faucets on without penalties, nobody is counting and the utility doesn't care. The maintenance fees for water cover it, spread across all residents (although they are not low, like $1,800 on top of mortgage, subsidizing things I don't use, like card rooms, ping pong hall, etc.). Some families live 4-5 in a 2 bedroom, in my case it's just the two of us and the dog. Pretty insane, no logical solutions in sight. Moving isn't inexpensive.
That seems unusual to me. I've never lived in a place where water was not metered and charged by the volume consumed. A necessity like water (and A/C) should be as you describe, but I've never seen it, at least not in the USA.
I live in a condo in Florida in a 3 building high-rise compound. There are no water meters per unit. Water is covered by maintenance fees. They are atrocious and rising, but water is "free". Retrofitting will increase maintenance fees, likely by a lot more than I would save paying for my own water usage.
I had a similar situation involving electricity when living in Los Angeles, in the Valley. Electricity costs were averaged across all units, there were no individual meters per unit. My family of 3 humans in a 2 bedroom apartment consumed a lot less than a 10 human family in a 3 bedroom, and that was a thing. I subsidized their electricity usage. This involved things like pool heating, grass maintenance which I never cared about or used. This was at Bella Vista near Warner Ridge. https://www.equityapartments.com/los-angeles/woodland-hills/...
In the US, utility companies don't bill you for actual usage, they have "predictions" on what you may use. IME. You can burn candles and eat canned food for a month and still get billed $300.
Hey, thanks for this comment. You seem to be knowledgeable about the topic and I am a moron.
What happens to consumer spending and associated tax revenue when imported goods cost significantly more? Let's take a hypothetical German auto brand that has no factories in the US (BMW, MB, VW have factories, not sure if Audi and Porsche are grandfathered in because of VW).
If a car that cost $100K before and now is $125K, it seems that the demographic that could afford that $100K will shrug and pay the higher price. Now, that's the well-off folks, a bit immune in this economy.
What other consumer goods with imposed new tariffs will cause less spending and shrink the economy instead? It seems that tariffs are a net loss, besides I guess in cases when they are used to prevent dumping.
Engaging story. As it is fiction, were you influenced by personal events to write it? I don't have Aarons like this in my life, but there is one childhood friend who'd take on risks I'd be afraid to myself. Still my best friend.
The airgun is a subtle touch. I am in Florida, all kinds of cowboys here, are BBs legal in the UK?
> were you influenced by personal events to write it?
I tried to build a Polymarket bot during Christmas break last year, and didn't get as far as I'd have liked to. But I spent a lot of time thinking about prediction markets thereafter and it certainly became a germination point for this story idea.
> The airgun is a subtle touch. I am in Florida, all kinds of cowboys here, are BBs legal in the UK?
I'm not sure actually -- it's great that you picked up on that detail though as I was trying to make that part more feasible for something based in the UK.
I tried to build a Polymarket bot during Christmas break last year, and didn't get as far as I'd have liked to. But I spent a lot of time thinking about prediction markets thereafter and it certainly became a germination point for this story idea.
It's nice but the original hits more raw to me. Perhaps because I heard it first ages ago. There was a kerfuffle about the song's provenance a few year ago.
I am a fan of covers, like Johny Cash's NIN "Hurt" or Marylin Manson's Depeche "Personal Jesus". If anyone has faves regardless of the genre, please share.
The Band’s cover of Springsteen’s “Atlantic City” is superb, particularly the addition of the accordion.
A band called Lake Street Dive has a phenomenal cover of Hall & Oates’ “Rich Girl”.
Scary Pockets is a group with rotating artists (formed by Patreon’s founder/CEO), their covers of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” are two I return to frequently.
My 2019 macbook pro recently started giving me CATERR errors.
It's a seven year old laptop. Did you want to be buried with it? All in good humor, my guy, only wondering about your expectations. The error seems to be Intel related, Apple is the manufacturer, but you are out of warranty. What is your issue?
Muh nagios, I can’t be buried but I expect it to run forever like my Toyota. Apple has been caught before to deliberately slow down macs and iPhones. It doesn’t matter it has intel processor or not. Apple’s current suppliers are Broadcom and Qualcomm. Do you get to their throats? No. You blame apple since laptop is sold under apple brand.
How can "it" run forever? Things burn out, overheat, bit rot, SSD read/writes, blah blah. The warranty is the warranty, or you get an extended one. Comparison to a Hilux seems fair on surface but isn't in reality. At some point your Toyota is a ship of Theseus. It's doable under the vehicle constraints. Just musing, cheers.
Are you sayin 0% is bad? What is better then? If you have the means, pay outright, no? It used to be a lot worse, paying $16K+ for a 128MB Quadra something based RIP in mid nineties . Do you mean that these things are overpriced from the get go?
I am merely pointing out additional revenue streams for Apple here. They make money off the hardware and again off the financing. Car manufacturers and have much lower margins and finance via their financial arms with much less predatory terms than your average credit card. The zero percent APR is very attractive, and easy to convince yourself to go with something above what you can afford. Times are good for Apple.
Good for them. Things cost what they do. I hear you that one can fall into the 0% interest trap, but that’s on us.
Not that I want it to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple could get away with even higher prices today. Like 50% more retail on everything. They are holding the line, but I wonder for how long and why. They can pretty much charge what they want.
But you aren't buying a Mac at that point, no? The hardware is 1/2 or 1/4. I'd get an X1 myself if it could run macOS, I like the looks and the aesthetic, don't much care about Linux besides my Proxmox / HA/ *arr setup on an old NUC. Why can't we have it all, eh? :)
There's actually a number of Thinkpads that can. Searching "thinkpad macos efi" will reveal a number of OpenCore configurations that support booting into the various x86 builds of macOS. I set it up once and was surprised to see that even my touchscreen worked, in addition to a HW accelerated desktop.
Mac is actually cheaper I think.
I am looking for laptops with 64GB of RAM. X1 Carbon with not even top Intel CPU costs the same as Macbook pro with 18 core M5 PRO and 64GB of RAM.
Mac has much better GPU (not even close), much faster CPU (not close either).
I am getting about half the performance (if you combine CPU and GPU) for the same price with X1 Carbon.
It's true X1 is lighter, arguably has a better keyboard (although that's a judgement call) and has a trackpoint. At this point though Apple wins on both performance and price overall.
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