"About a third of what passengers pay goes to Uber for commissions and booking fees." Holy shit. That's way too much commission for a company that uses software and not actual labor to connect drivers to riders.

Software costs labor to develop, maintain, and operate. If you feel operating Uber's systems should cost much less, why not invest or found a competitor ?

Hmm. Not an Uber user myself as we have cheap and reliable taxis in Germany, but how is payment handled? Does Apple take their usual 30/15% cut as with Netflix, Spotify and friends?

The 30% cut is only for digital products sold via native apps.

That's why the Amazon iOS app lets you buy physical products but e.g. Kindle ebook purchases are not supported in the app.

I'm an American in Munich, and while taxis here are indeed reliable, I wouldn't call them cheap. Ballpark, I'd say they're about twice as expensive as the Uber/Lyft trips I've taken back in the States.

> I'm an American in Munich, and while taxis here are indeed reliable, I wouldn't call them cheap.

Compared to the stories I have heard about US taxis (underqualified drivers, bad technical maintenance, general unreliability), I am not surprised. You can't have reliable and cheap.

In addition to the mentioned factors, of course Uber/Lyft can be less expensive in the US - they ditch the contributions to social security, healthcare and pension system that is required for German employees.

btw, I am Munich-based too... yes our taxis are expensive indeed but so are the living costs. Can't have no taxi drivers when they don't have a place to live in.

> You can't have reliable and cheap.

Well, the ones I've taken so far in the US have been fine.

> btw, I am Munich-based too... yes our taxis are expensive indeed but so are the living costs.

Much of my Uber using has been in the SF bay area, which is substantially more expensive to live in than Munich. It's still way cheaper.

Just to add to a sibling poster, Uber doesn’t require, but does allow you to use Apple Pay for rides. Apple Pay costs about the same as a regular credit card payment to the merchant.

And yet they're still losing money fast.

Rapid expansion and getting away with illegal behaviour by staying inside legal system's OODA loop cost money.

how do you feel about app store commissions?

Musk should've probably asked Bezos for Amazon's logistic expertise.

Is there such a thing as effectively massaging yourself? Or do you mean that your partner went to masseuse school while you developed a habit of running? :p

Yes, there is. Obviously, it's difficult to massage everything, but there's a lot you can do. Especially if you have long arms or especially flexible.

In fact, you may be able to do MORE than a massage therapist can do in many parts of the body because you're always around and you only have one patient to deal with. And, while you are not as objective, you do know how everything feels.

I took an intro to massage class and have done quite a bit of reading on the topic.

I think this is the most sage advice of all. There's a TED talk that also says the same based on an extensive study: "What makes a good life?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KkKuTCFvzI

IMO, happiness is just a side-effect, and shouldn't be optimized, just like the taste of good food. What needs to be optimized are ways to sustain happiness, and one of those is finding meaning in life.

Do less laundry.

I actually have a simpler solution which I've been following for some months now - drinking one tall glass of water everytime I feel thirsty. If you have small paper cups instead, then drink 3-4 of them. But drink enough so you may not need to drink for the next hour or so.

This way, I'm able to get in 7-8 glasses in a day (which is the usual prescribed limit).

One thing I find is that you're description of your work-experiences is very curt. I know you want to keep it long enough not to bore the recruiter/manager types, but you may as well brag a bit more in depth so that they may expect the amazing things you are wiling to do for them.

Thank you!

Offshore account? As in transfer his wallet credentials to some safe offshore vault?

This word sounds scarier than what it means in 2017, especially in the context of crypto-currencies. An HTTP request to a BTC wallet server in any foreign country could be an 'transfering to an offshore account'. No banks are storing BTC for you AFAIK, no money would be transferred via Swift or other formal means.

And it wouldn't make sense for someone about to go to jail for BTC related crimes to be mailing an encrypted thumb drive to a safe deposit box in a foreign country...

In this case the BTC wasn't his to begin with so he had zero rights to do anything with it.

He spent the bitcoins to a new UTXO that the Feds didn't have access to. Since these "accounts" exist on the block chain, which is replicated on computers all over the world, I guess every account is an offshore account.

That makes sense and I almost wonder if all of this talk about the price is somehow sneaky marketing. iPhone has traditionally been positioned as a moderate luxury phone... this price is only marginally more than the current top end phones. But if you're going to buy a phone for status, don't you want to buy the most expensive? And all of this talk in the media about how expensive the iPhone is service to cement that notion in peoples minds.