muse900

Bigger hotels tend to have a reservations team. Not every hotel will give you a better offer than whats on booking but depending on how you'll put it on your email etc yes you do get some discount against booking.com. Don't forget that a hotel has to pay 15-20% fee on the booking at booking.com and also has to deal with booking.com's rating system afterwards.

For me so far its worked everytime I am emailing the reservations team at a hotel. (I am in their trade though and tend to use my business email when booking) I reckon phoning a hotel might be harder to get you a discount because most of the times the frontdesk staff won't put you through to the reservations rep because he might be unavailable or whatever so they'll just give you whatever price the system tells them which is what you'll get on their website if you go to book directly. Its important to be able to contact the person that can amend the booking prices and frontdesk staff usually can't do that.

I use booking.com both as a customer and hotelier.

Usually I’ll search booking.com to find a hotel to stay and if the hotel belongs to a brand let’s say Hilton or Marriott I’ll email them directly to get a better price. For smaller hotels or apartments I use booking.com for the security it provides me with. By security I mean that in the unfortunate case that the hotel of apartment I booked is overbooked or something similar, I trust booking.com and on its ability to force the hotelier to reaccomodate me somewhere else. I’ve had this happened to me previously as a client and booking.com managed to straight it out. Now if you book directly through a small hotel or apartment or even use the likes of Airbnb or something at points you risk being out of accommodation and just getting your money back which in a busy season that there is no availability left in the area and the closest room is 2 times more expensive than you booked. I know that people think that’s an extreme scenario but let me tell you that I run my hotel like airlines do. It’s cheaper to overbook and relocate someone to a near hotel having 105% capacity than having running lower than 100% on high season. And of course I had that happen to me as a client previously and just getting money back wasn’t nice at all. But overall look at hotels and email them, most hotels will knock off the 15-20% commission booking.com is charging.

I can't stress enough about the first sentence and how important it is.

Metrics have become the goto into having a business nowadays and we min/max everything, squeeze every little bit we can out of things. Its an open market and anyone is able to do however he pleases with his company, but I hate it.

The most recent example that comes to mind is Activision-Blizzard where they exceeded their revenue and profits for 2018 but they went on and downsized the company letting people go and cutting down the overall experience. I hate when this happens really, especially when its crucial to safety like airplanes. I think Boeing should have gotten more than a slap on the wrist for the max's that crashed.

I am thankful for being healthy and for others around me being healthy too so far.

I had the same issue, especially using facebook. I'd always go into those arguments without a reason.

My wife pointed out, that I don't need to do that. She questioned me about the reason I am going into those arguments with others especially the ones I don't know and I'll never ever meet.

It made total sense to me. It changed me completely. Any time I want to say something on the internet I just keep it to myself, and its great. I don't need to think 'oh what is that person gonna say etc'.

I only express opinions of my own like the one I am typing right now and it feels great.

So my advice is, next time you are about to go on an argument on the internet, think of it and if its worth your time... and just don't do it :)

This is my own perspective from what I've been reading/ seeing as a customer for the past few years and how the company has changed from its warcraft/diablo even world of warcraft days to now.

Yes there are still people working for Blizzard that have been there for 15 years or longer. (Is that a good thing? yes and no. The motivation declines the longer you are at a specific job, not that it applies to everyone but I consider that to be a a big factor)

The issue here though isn't about how long someone has been working on a project like WoW or for the company itself. The main issue is that like any other company out there that became successful it went in full corporate mode.

That dev that has been working in wow since 2002 and before the game was even out, has probably very little say of what happens to the game. The game as any other game that is coming out from blizzard right now feels like its build by pure stats. It feels like a marketing specialist, sat down with a stats guru and they decided on what people like based on trends and what people are doing. That combined with the business people demanding more money, more game currency transactions, more gambling involved into the game and RNG being the top, have made games like WoW being awful to enjoy.

The difference between Blizzard back then and Activision-Blizzard now is that Blizzard a small/medium game studio was building games that the team would love to play. WoW was a pure unexplored world ready to accommodate any kind of player - it was an adventure. Nowadays the WoW of today is like a themepark where every ride is very specific.

Again personally I spent so much time in WoW during the first 2-3 expansions, and nowadays I want to play but the game is just not good enough.

So as a player yes I'd say you are right to say there are people still working for Blizzard that were working back then but the small/medium studio that would put passion behind their games, turned into a corporation trying to build games based on stats.

And I hope that there will be another indie company that will eventually become like valve, blizzard or ea. Us gamers need that, we need a company that will produce amazing games with loads of passion and not just for the moneygrab.

I feel like this was a thing back then, not only because the "strong and powerful" men of that ERA where in and out of a hotel lobby but also cause journalism was based on going out to get/make a story.

Nowadays I feel like real journalism is a very small fraction of the journalism field in general and I feel like most news/media outlets (paper, tv, blogs) are just copy pasting stories from others in a bad manner as well, changing them up to feel a bit more "wow this thing happened", and you end up with a story that has nothing to do with the original.

We do live in the ERA of over-information and lazy journalism. A news outlet in most cases doesn't need to go out of their way to find the story and the cases that happens is very limited nowadays. The media will just display anything that comes their way on steroids to make it interesting... and thats why I don't watch the news :)

On the other hand I am pretty certain there are still Hotels in Europe where the strong and powerful pass through on a daily basis, and there are up and coming smart hotels which have a lobby that I've personally seen the next tech idea being discussed from its ground.

I flew with another airline that he was part of called Laudamotion. Its part of ryanair (not great), but you can tell from the more sportif look. The seats were pure leather and the airhosteses were wearing jeans.

You don't need some crazy fasting diet to cut down sweets. Just diet for 3-4 days and boom the crave is gone. It comes back but you need to be able to handle it.

I'll say this to anyone out there wanting to look after himself and maybe lose extra weight or whatever.

I used to be overweight growing up. I mainly think is the fact that one of my parents used to be overweight and it reflected on our bad habits of eating. I've lost all the extra weight since I was 17 and maintained it now in my 30s. I still have the craves and I still wanna stuff myself with food and sweets and everything yes. What keeps me going is taming it and understanding that food for me is one of those things that I'll struggle with for the rest of my life. Its me that has to say no I won't eat anymore, I won't have that sweet I won't this or that. I do eat sweets maybe once a week. Everything in moderation though. I weight myself every single day and I am trying to maintain my weight to a healthy level. +3 -3 and don't go above or under.

Its on me! And as soon as you understand that then you'll have an easier time maintaining yourself. Food is an addiction and for me personally its very close to drinking.

The same way you'll say to yourself 'no I wont drink tonight' (and you go off and get absolutely blind :P) because I don't want to, I got work tomorrow, drinking is only for the weekend or special days cause I got a family etc. The same way you should be able to tame yourself and your needs around food and sweets. 'No I won't eat this delicious burger or sweet cause I already had my fair share this week, I'll try it in 3 days, today am gonna have some steamed veggies, some lean meat, some good carb etc'.

Some people are born with the privilege of not caring about food and not being overweight and being in perfect health. Others like me just have to struggle their whole lives for it, but its until you realise that this is what you have to do and until you realise that you have to change your habits and maintain it for the rest of your life you won't just change. Also find a sport, doesn't need to be the gym specifically just something you do 2-3 times a week and maintain yourself. You need to be active especially if you are working an office job.

Agree with you.

And everyone out there is about becoming a billion $ or more company... What happened to normal ideas, ideas that can literally feed a few families and make you have a good life as well...

Person behind the article seems to enjoy himself and also seems to be feeding a few farms as well that provide him with onions. Amazing work!

Completely agree with you, and if am going on a 4-5 interview step thing and blackboards are presented etc then I want you to be able to offer same sign on bonuses and perks big companies can offer.

If the only thing you have to offer is equity (risk) and a lower salary than what I was getting/market salary why don't I just save me some time and risk it all by starting my own company.

Clarification: this just happened to me as well, I’ve been using revolut as my main source of paying for things. I transfer money through a uk bank and also have provided them with payslips and tax documents. Everything was fine up to 1 day ago that they blocked a bank transfer I tried to make which I’ve been making for the past year or so and which is around £36 for a debt of mine to a bank.

Since then no explanation, just that they are looking into it and they haven’t explained to me what the issue is and if they need any documents of me.

I think everyone needs to know of what can happen to them. I am personally extremely confident that am going to resolve my issue since I have all the paperwork and everything that is needed to show that the money comes from honest work and every single penny of tax have been paid. Thing is after this, I’ll be looking at alternatives as I can’t have this happen to me again. Personally I feel like chat messages doesn’t seem to work really well for those kind of issues and the fact that you can’t phone anyone about it apart from financial bodies in each country to report the incident, or moan on Twitter is not a good solution.

completely agree, this would have been much nicer if it was simpler.

The scrolling and transitions makes it kinda impossible to follow through for me too.

Good point.

You have to think the scale though. US is not the same as e.g Sweden and can't be the same. The amount of benefits you get in Scandi countries or Europe in general against the US are massive. At the same time you have to think that the US is a country of 330m people compared to an average EU country of 10-20m people.

In the UK whilst there is free healthcare etc and its a country of 66m, the healthcare has been getting worse and worse. The appointment queues go up to years for a simple thing in London. (I had a meniscus tear and they appointed me to see an orthopaedic in a year after I was diagnosed. Just to see him. While its understandable that emergency issues are getting bumped up the ladder, mine which was a non-emergency felt like a bummer when I heard the orthopaedic wont see me for a whole year just to see at which stage I am at. That includes doing some scans to see my stage which the GP won't know unless he is some kind of magician. Yes again he can check if the leg is hammered around the knee to bump up how of an emergency it is.)

Generally speaking I think the main issue is that the US is such a large country that can't work the same as EU countries. That goes for everything, from benefits, to working schedules to prison systems etc.

I am not too narrow minded so I see war as a not good thing and a as a not bad thing. I don't like seeing anything in this world as a good or a bad thing.

War is something that comes to us by default. Its in our nature, as its in every animals nature for survival. Its not something pushed to us by dictators and what not.

Also I don't agree with your sentence of removing poems, legends and whatever from the internet. Let each person decide for himself whats to be filtered in his head or not. The internet should be free, accessible and non filtered.

More to your point, we have vilified death a bit too much.

In the past they had poems about death, sung death, created legends.

Dying in the battlefield in an honorable way was seen as a good way to leave this place and go to the next one.

The world needs to renew itself, or else there won't be enough resources to feed one another.

We are at peaceful times but one thing history can show us is our future, and in history there have been times of peace, although they only lasted for a few years.

I was in the exact same position. Growing up and playing online games, spending most of my time with people that were obnoxious douches - cause who cares its the internet (and they were older), shaped me to be an obnoxious douche too. 18 to 20 it was all time low for me. Apart from being very obese, I just didn't care about anyone I'd meet in real life. I'd put up a wall and anytime I'd meet someone I would feel like they don't like me etc.

Difference between you and me is that I worked heavily on it. I understood that I need to be more open to conversations and more kind. Also that not everyone speaks the online gaming culture language I do, people would not laugh at my brutal jokes cause not everyone plays games out there or has been subjected to trolling etc, and not everyone would diminish things so easily as I and other gamers would do. I lost all the extra weight and anytime the obnoxious douche would try to come out and be weird or mean to people I'd say no to him. If it did happen and I was a douche to someone, which can happen even today after many years I'd own up to it and be sorry and ask for forgiveness.

Nothing in this life is a given and yes some people like me and you have to put extra work in order to make things happen. Its totally doable though.

I'd also suggest you to find a therapist that you like and can trust and get some help on it.

Hope that helps you on your quest.

"Moderation in all things" - Aristotle

Like others I think you should see a therapist about it.

Work - Gym - Netflix, misses so many things from reaching a balanced life.

A person needs to interact with others apart from their work and gym. Also I do understand that through e.g Netflix you are sort of interacting with 'others' points of views etc e.g getting emotional about your favourite character etc. Thing is that this needs to happen in your real life as well apart from the imaginary world of watching a film or online gaming for example.

I too for some years while growing up got stuck into computer games, and it felt like it was the only thing I liked to do. I got out of it and I am happy I did so, now I have a family, I go out, I go to the gym, I like working too, I do play video games for 1-2 hours a day on my off time and I am quite happy that I explored and learnt that there are way more things in life than just video games.

I hope that helps you understand that you also need some human interaction in your personal life.

Personal View: As with any other skilled job out there that is not based on commission like software devs unless you find a company that pays out big bonuses, you will have a cap as to what you can gain.

I don't think I know many software devs that make big bucks unless working at the 0.5% or something.

Usually in order to make big bucks you either start your own company or you work on a commission based occupation. That said a software developer can do commission based as a contractor and usually that has a lot of money involved, but again unless you have a company of contractors lets say and you are just 1 person I think there is an X amount of stuff you can manage a year which means that your 'salary' will be capped at some point.

From what I've heard Silicon Valley is also very expensive. Apart from that for non US citizens I reckon its hard to land a working visa with the current situation in the US and immigration.

I feel like what pays you higher than SV etc is if you can land a nice US remote work at about $100-120k but live in a place like Portugal or whatever that its very cheap VS your salary.

> but at 3k you should be able to have a peaceful life in France

I don't know about the French market and how expensive it is, I only know that Paris is very an expensive city.

I also don't know if you have kids etc, but I feel like your statement about 3k being good to live on is sort of directed to a solo scenario? Can you have an ok life having 3k a month + a spouse having 2k a month + 2 kids in Paris for example? From my recent visit I found that its very expensive and a 5k combined salary would be considered low to survive. Again I might be wrong but enlighten me please, am interested.

Personal opinion from what I am reading around and from owning an oled TV. I am in no way an expert.

I own an oled for 1 and a half year now without issues. From what I read online is that issues with burning might occur after having static images for a very very long time. E.g if you are watching cnn for a long time everyday its static images might burn. Thats my understanding of it. Supposedly also LG has a fix on the new oled models that make burning even much less possible.

Other than that which hasn't happened to me at all, the image is considerably better than any lcd/led model out there.

Again this is just my personal opinion/experience.

Yes it should be considered work. Anything you do towards your company should be accounted as work.

I also think commuting within reason should be accounted as work. Lets say 30 mins to go to work and 30 minutes to get back from work. That never happens obviously but in an ideal world it should be happening. I see some airplane crews e.g working for Ryanair 3 and a half hour flight, then go back another 3 and half hour, count an hour in between the flight for the change, and then they have to be redirected to where they live that can be another 3 and a half hour flight but its only in 5 hours from the time they get off. Its not accounted as work for them... but imagine they wouldn't be there in the first place if it wasn't for their work.

Also as I posted at another comment in another similar thread, I think the world should be evolving to a 6 hours 4 days a week schedule. Our work has been way more efficient with computers and it is only getting more and more efficient. We can most definitely enjoy the advancement of humanity by adding more personal time to our schedules instead of working more. We are not at a point where we are making 1 car a day, we are at a point where there is an influx of cars in factories, an influx of flights across the globe etc.

So I'd counter the title (although since 2012) with : 'Bring on 24 hour working weeks'!

Yep I agree, the meaning of success is very subjective. Imho success shouldn't be numbered in $ or PhDs.

I've met simple people, with not much money or education, although they are successful to me cause they managed to create a nice family and have a happy life. Something that usually its hard for people working towards their careers 24/7.

Hesiod once wrote 'Moderation in all things'. That personally is my moto. I don't have to have done something that is out of this world to be successful. I can be successful enough by valuing my own time, raising my kids in a proper manner and generally being happy. If I am happy, I am successful.

No.

Lets be clear about that, using uber is not the same as buying jewelry from war criminals. (hit a vein cause my grandpa was executed by them).

Everyone used uber and keeps using uber no matter what comes into light. Certainty not many of us knew beforehand what uber was doing, and once it was out I think uber tried to cover it quickly by increasing benefits and whatnot for the drivers. So no its not the same and am not enabling any dodgy business or anything, don't misjudge my comment, uber is a multi-billion $ company of course its dodgy as any multi-billion $ company out there.

Personally what I've come to realize over the years is that 'Use a startup while its young, get rid of it and get on the next startup once it grows beyond just being a simple pre-seed, 1st round startup'.

My reasoning comes from the amount of cash investors pour money into startups, and startups having insane amount of deals at the very start in order to attract costumers like uber had and airbnb to an extend. After the 1st or 2nd round is where a strong cfo either joins or the VC's involved want to capitalize on what they got so they are trying to squeeze things in and butcher the level of service something provided so they can either IPO or sell for big $.

What am saying is not always the rule but it does apply to a lot of things.

- New currency exchange card coming out amazing rates etc, 3 years down drops down to whatever your bank was going to give you - uber is a cheap taxi alternative you can use by abusing its own staff and investor money, cool 5 years down the line it becomes the same as any other taxi out there and still manages to abuse their staff - airbnb has some nice quality for money accomodation cause they are taking care of the product? fine again few years down the line when it gets streamlined and is getting squeezed for its maximum value they drop their customer support standards etc.

So yes thats it for me, am not going to remain a loyal customer anymore, am going to use your startup and its initial investing deal you are giving me, and am going to jump ship to the 1st startup that is coming out to beat you. Sounds very egoistic, its not though, am just tired of getting treated like a sheep.

P.S not a startup but a company that I very much liked Blizzard is changing face and its getting squeezed out for money from Activision, I feel betrayed so am a bit biased on my views but as my father once said: 'I bought a miele washing machine 25 years ago and it still works like a charm. I bought a brand new Samsung washing machine as a 2nd and broke within 3 years and good luck with warranty, if companies are going to treat me like this from now on, then am going to treat them like that'.

yes it mentions the battery replacements and emerging markets as well.

I think he forgets to mention lack of innovation. It was the first year that I wasn't surprised from the new iPhone at all and none of my friends did. At this point I don't see much difference in having an X model vs XS.

You'll tell me that they had S models in the past and worked fine for them, sure... its not the same market anymore. There are very strong competitors using android which has also evolved and its doing really well as an OS vs what it was in the past at way cheaper prices.

At the price tag those iPhones are coming at plus the lack of innovation, I only see a constant drop in sales.

Personally I upgraded from an iPhone 7 to XS Max, my wife has an iPhone X and I don't see any difference between them, only the size. That plus the fact that I got my hands on some new android phones and got to use them made me think that I might change to android when my next upgrade is due. The apple ecosystem seems to be okish but I can't really say that it will keep me from changing. And truth be told there are quite a few solutions out there for them to become innovative again like the new ipad pro... have it use OS instead of iOS, that will definitely make people switch over to that and what comes with its ecosystem e.g pairing your mobile phone etc. Also airpods 2, just make some airpods with water resistance etc maybe improve connectivity a bit. Its not like we are requesting crazy innovation here, just simple solutions that will make us stick with the apple ecosystem.

Disclaimer: I was an avid windows user and android phone user up till iphone 5s came out, I switched to 5s and the difference on iOS quality vs Android was massive. Due to work I also started working with a mac and so I joined the ecosystem and I can't say am very displeased apart from the price tag, but seeing how Android has progressed over the years and how stock Android can be even superior to iOS has made me thinking of changing back.

Well if thats what you practice on your interviews then you might miss out at some people that might react the way you want them to react and be a good fit.

I would personally walk away as well, its not like am some kind of superstar, I just feel that I won't be a good match to a company that asks questions that I feel are not needed. The way I see it an interview is always two ways. The company is interviewing me to see if am a good fit and I am interviewing the company to see if they are a good fit for me since I'll be spending at least 8 hours a day 5 days a week of my time working for that company.

Personally so far what I've seen working ok for us in human systems is to just have a talk with the person we are interviewing, see what his/her hobbies are and generally feel if he/she is a good fit.

> Otherwise in relation to the topic in general I'm not 100% I want my most awake time to go to the company I work for. Is that wrong?

Nope, I completely agree with that also. I personally don't want to spend my most awake time for the company I work either.

Also just to comment on something that has been said times and times again, the 8 hour working schedule was introduced more than 150 years ago and started getting implemented 100 years ago. Its time for humanity to move on and find different systems that will allow us to work less and enjoy more of what life has to offer. We did have the computational revolution during the 90's early 2000 and now we've reached a point where a lot of jobs have been automated and a lot more to come. Think of everything out there and how much faster its been done with the use of computers and the internet. So our productivity must have went up by tremendous amounts although the working hours didn't go down at all, they remained exactly the same.

My personal belief is we can easily bring it down to 6 hours a day and slowly slowly bring it down to 4 working days per week. Of course such thing must happen massively around the globe, given how interlinked countries are nowadays.

Don't know much about the matter, I am from EU and traveled to NY a week ago.

The carrier I was assigned to was AT&T from my own carrier and it showed like I had 3-4 bars 4g all the time, although everything was so slow, in many cases I couldn't even do a search on google.

For a whole week, while being there I felt like I had no actual 4g, heck not even 3g. I don't know if thats AT&T specifically or New York being a very busy city but ye thats a real problem right there tbh, seeking out wifi just because you cant get the service you are supposedly paying for sucks.