Anyone who is a fan of the TV Show Community MUST try out the recreation of the 8 bit video game episode(Digital Estate Planning) called Journey to the Center of Hawkthorne.
A short term benefit from government subsidized RAM will burn you down the road when the Chinese are the only place to get your goods. But I guess that was the original achilles heel of capitalism anyway.
I'd like to think that modern centers are water cooled so it'd be more quiet these days unless you are implying that this application of theirs is running on legacy hardware? :P
The time you'd need to compare products also has value. Saving that time by buying a trusted brand is not inefficiency. You'd be poorer if you actually went out of your way comparing thousands of products.
If your model of an ideal market suggests that the realistic and practical approach is inefficient, i.e. your model fails when confronted by reality, your model is horseshit.
Also brand recognition and trust has real value because clearly people are willing to pay for it. Value isn't something intrinsic in an object. Value derives from what people are willing to pay. If people pay more for a rock with an Apple logo on it, then the rock with the Apple logo is more valuable. It's a quality other rocks don't have.
And what does "non-economic reasons" even mean? Should we all only drink tap water because it's cheaper and keeps us alive just as well? Or are we allowed to have some pleasure in life as well?
The time you need to find out competitor pricing (quote) is also inefficiency. Ideally (unachievable of course) all the options and prices (and fair comparison based on product utility only) is immediately available for any customer upon demand, with zero time spent on research.
Irrational behavior is when customers choose a product not for its utility divided by price (but note that pleasure is a type of utility).
Now, exactly how to calculate aforementioned utility is a big pandora box, the whole schools of economists grew up on that question.
I thought about quite often while visiting a pub owned by the land lord renting out 150 rooms above. Each floor had a large industrial shared kitchen, shared bathrooms, toilets and a large shared living room. If people had 1-2 guests they would stay in their room, if they had 2-10 guests they would use the shared space, if they had 4-80 guests they would take the elevator to the pub. When one was bored with the guests or didn't have time they were left in the pub. Technically people had bar shifts in their rent contract (that you could buy your way out of) but there were plenty who enjoyed running the bar for free. Drinks were at cost. If you tried to tip or didn't take your change they left it on the counter and it would sit there for a day or two. The problem of the pinball machine earnings they solved with rounds of free drinks and chips.
When asked the owner said exploiting a bar was entirely to much work. If he wanted more money from the people living there he could just increase the rent?
Yeah this is just describing providing amenity for common areas in a shared building. Not much different from the doorman and free water bottles in the lobby or the rooftop swimming pool being baked into the rent of the units.
The difference is that there are very similar establishments in the same street. Drinks cost 10-20 times more, they look far more polished, every detail had attention as one would expect from a commercial effort. Complete with loud music to limit conversation and boost sales.
Of course. Just as it's impossible to have zero inefficiencies in any business or market. That's why I said "ideal", i.e. unachievable. But the closer we get, the better we are.
Most inefficiencies come from hard-to-get-into markets, like telecom market is an oligopoly. Or information disbalance (business actors hide their pricing, khm.. hospitals khm..). A good government would try to remove them inefficiencies as much as possible (public pricing, easy-to-get capital), and make every business race-to-the-bottom competition.
It depends on what you mean, do you mean both gross and net? Just one of the two?
Gross margin of zero would be mean you sell at exactly the cost to produce. Net margin of zero means you cover all your expenses including COGS. The only really difficult, practically impossible, thing would be doing both at the same time. Though, I could also see a case where you drive down net margins once sunk costs are paid and achieve both.
Doing so practically, or sustainably, in most circumstances would be uhh crazy… but it’s not impossible. Even then I think aiming for zero margin is a pretty credible tactic in eliminating competition if you can out sustain them.
TLDR; Weird? Sure. But not impossible. And even sort of likely if you’re trying to atrophy your competition out of existence.
Does anyone have experience with the Fairbuds and Fairbuds XL? I am DESPERATE to get off this Apple headphone bandwagon but need something reliable that will work with Apple devices. I'm generally extremely happy with Apple products but the headphones have been a money sink.
I’m someone who bought three generations of AirPods Pro, as well as an AirPods Max. All four devices have been absolute headaches.
The first AirPods Pro had the rattle‑gate issue. I was able to get it replaced under warranty, but it was a pain to deal with until the recall program came out.
Ok I chalked it up to a first gen product and I generally liked it when it worked so I decided to upgrade to the second generation because it offered more features and I hoped that it improved reliability.
I upgraded, and I immediately got the rattle‑gate problem again, this time right past the warranty period. There was no recall program for second gens, and when I went to the store they told me the headphones were damaged and I was out of luck.
I try to maintain these devices extremely carefully, but I guess my use of isopropyl alcohol to disinfect and clean them damaged the ANC microphone. I’ve never dropped the AirPods, yet they still failed.
While being super frustrated with the Pro 2 I ended up buying the pro 3 but reconsidered after what I was told about the status of the Pro 2 but I missed the return window by a few days. After these Pro 3 fail, I just don't want to give them any more money for headphones.
I saw the Airpods Max on sale for Black friday a while back so I gave them a try as I was getting ear issues wearing in ear devices for so long each day. While they are very comfortable, the ear caps are a pain to clean.
They absorb sweat and oils over time and do not make it easy for them to get released when cleaning with detergent and water. it’s a massive effort. Im scrubbing with a toothbrush to clean, disinfect and then extensively drying them with a heater. All of this is taking 1+ hour each 1-2 weeks.
I am someone who is trying to maintain all my equipment as much as possible and this "woven texture" feels great but is not great for maintenance lifestyle.
Luckily ive accepted that the cheapo 20$ ear caps on Amazon are good enough and I just toss old ear caps after they become too hard to clean and buy another replacement set. I also have to disassemble the headband and use a special cleaning solution I found on Amazon, which smells like its just laundry detergent to prevent the headband from darkening from regular skin oils.
Now I’m starting to get very occasional "tinny" type of rattling with ANC enabled, as other people have indicated here as well.
These damn things are too expensive to have all these stupid issues. I’m really desperate for something more repairable and maintainable than this junk.
I had a sennheiser wired unit before this and those things lasted years with the only replacement being the ear caps like once a year.
As it stands, I may have spent close to $1,000 on this over the years, and I am just sick and tired of it. They’re not bad products when they work, they’re absolutely GREAT when they work. But man, all this headache when they dont work is just ridiculous at this point.
Have you reset your AirPods Max by holding down the non circular button until it starts blinking white and then reconnecting?
There have been times where the AirPods Max have sort of crashed, and I cannot get them to connect properly. I find that forgetting the AirPods in the phone/computer and then resetting them by holding down the button allows them to start fresh with a new state. Maybe that can help resolve the issue for you. But Im constantly switching them between three nearby devices so maybe thats why I have this problem. Just throwing it out there in case you haven't tried a reset.
This appears to be leading to people being super quiet about their AI usage. It really feels as if everyone is using it massively but keeping quiet about it. This is a guess as I haven't gone around and asked every single person about their AI usage.
I am reminded about a question I posted in a Vintage Apple subreddit. I described the problem and all the steps I took to try and resolve it. In the middle of the text I also hinted that I asked AI and that it gave be a wildly strange answer which I dismissed but that it gave me hints to continue onwards.
The majority of answers were focused around that one sentence and completely ignoring the rest of the post(and even the problem I was posting about). I was ridiculed (sometimes aggressively) for even considering trying the AI. Eventually someone finally answered the question, I thanked them and continued to get downvoted massively.
While I get that the vintage community can attract some colorful characters this was an interesting observation at how badly they reacted to the post. I've since refrained from mentioning AI and furthermore, trying to limit my involvement with communities like that and ironically working on better ways to use AI to solve problems so as to minimize dealing with them(finding ways of providing more system level data to the AI in my prompt).
>Aid to Israel is basically giving them weapons for free, i.e., paying US-based companies. I have no idea how did you jump from weapons to subsidizing Israel's healthcare.
Sick and tired of this old argument: Its still adding to the debt, so its socialism to increase military contractor stock prices.
Not really, this increases the profits of American oil and gas exports, USA is one of the countries that benefits from higher prices.
You could argue that just benefits petrol companies, but overall USA doesn't really lose on this its mostly the rest of the world that pays for it, and it might redistribute a bit inside USA.
When the US went to Iraq the approval rating was in the 90s(correction I mixed up Iraq and Afghanistan, Iraq was 70-80s) because the US had been attacked, and Bush took the time to sell the war to the Americans (with lies) by the time all the disasters kept coming in, support dropped to the 40s.
This war started in the 40s approval rating. If bodies start coming home in mass, I don't know how things will turn out for Trump and his party but its already looking like a disaster for them and it hasn't even hit the really ugly part yet.
[1]: https://projecthawkthorne.com/
It is now available to play straight in the browser(I guess using LÖVE Web Builder?).
[1]:https://schellingb.github.io/LoveWebBuilder/
This engine has really come a long way and enabled such a memorable game for me.
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