My biggest issue here is delivery date certainty. So often the manufacturer will list "2-5 day delivery" or similar. But no way to tell which side of the country they ship from.
469 karma · joined March 18, 2012
If you see "Ships from Amazon, Sold by RandomCompany" you might worry about counterfeits. But the "Sold by Amazon" item might also have been sourced from (or counterfeited by) "RandomCompany".
A label of "Broken" or "Works" or "Missing X" is so much more helpful for appliances left out.
This has been impossible so far, because even USB bluetooth dongles still require each host computer to pair (and un-pair) with the keyboard/mouse.
I am going to try your solution, and I will plug the USB input into the large monitor on my desk. Then any laptop that plugs into that monitor should have access to the wireless keyboard/mouse. Thank you for creating and sharing this!
I've been thinking the exact same thing about toasters. Here was my recent comment in the "Generation Junk" thread a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38796570
"was hoping it lasted longer & would be better quality but was disappointed" "All the coils do no not glow and It toasts unevenly" "one side stops working after 6 months or so. I’ve gone through three of these" "Bought two of these toasters both stopped working" "Have to replace this toaster about once a year, one side will always stop working" "Lasted me about a month or so and it no longer works". "Died so quickly!"
I think this is a perfect example of the problem. There is a market for $250 toasters, but even for that price you can't buy a reliable toaster.
It seems to me that RealPage simply helps landlords assess the market price for apartments. Sort of like how "Redfin Estimate" and Zillow's "Zestimate" help homeowners assess the market value of their house. The reason houses and apartments are expensive is because the market rate is so high.
My test for whether RealPage is anticompetitive would be: does RealPage induce multiple landlords to withhold apartments from the market in order to intentionally restrict supply and drive up rents? (Or, does RealPage just clue them in to how high the market rents are?)
With your initial dispute of "order not received", they pointed to the 1200€ credit and said, "here's what you ordered". This credit does indeed disprove any claim of "I didn't get anything for the 1200€ I was charged".
The problem is you don't want to receive any order; you want there to be no order at all, and no exchange of 1200€.
Which version of PayPal checkout did they use? I think there's a standard PayPal checkout, where you complete the transaction at a PayPal-hosted page. And there's an "express" PayPal checkout, where you login to a PayPal-hosted popup to complete some initial authorization, then complete the checkout process on the merchant-hosted site.
I think there would have been some point where you authorized a 1200€ payment on a PayPal-hosted site, do you recall that step? I think that step is critical to your claim here that they should return your money.
You mentioned "They had authorization for recurring payments, so they pulled those 1200 without my interaction." And also, "at no point that amount was shown to me" How did they get that authorization? Could you reproduce the checkout flow up to the point of PayPal authorization to see if the 1200 amount is shown in the PayPal-hosted part of the checkout flow, and whether it's hidden in the merchant-hosted portion of the flow?
But I can't pay more to get a higher quality version of the tool, because the store doesn't even bother stocking a higher quality version.
If I plan ahead, I can shop online and find a quality tool. But what I really want is the option to buy a quality tool during a weekend project.
Then I had a terrible, 2-week long experience with 'pine mouth'.
Everything tasted awful: coffee, muffins, cereal, meat, vegetables – even water tasted bitter. And during the first few days, before I realized what was happening, I threw away tons of perfectly safe food that I thought had spoiled.
I never found out how common pine mouth was, but I was really upset that the risk wasn't better communicated.
However even with my entire electrical panel switched off at the main breaker, the supply from the meter is always live. So with the panel cover removed in order to install the clips, it would have been possible to touch the supply lines and get a lethal shock.
If you have any qualms about working safely in an electrical panel, hiring an electrician is the way to go.
I much prefer this approach (by Emporia and IoTaWatt) of multiple CTs (non-contact sensors applied to specific circuits) vs. the "Learning" devices that try to interpret what's using energy based on a signature of power usage, with reportedly very poor success.
The app is quit useful. I do wish I could get access to the raw data by default, without needing to send it through their cloud first (only way to get data off the decice) and submit an export request to get emailed a CSV.
There was a previous discussion with some more details about what they're doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18344636
Oftentimes the lines run in alternating inbound / outbound directions. The same conveyor belt that carries packages from an inbound regional trailer to a local delivery vehicle at 4am, might run in reverse at 8pm to carry local business pickups to the outbound regional trailer at 8pm.
If the packages from one flow can't clear the lines, the system could grind to a halt.
I worked at UPS during an unprecedented winter storm in the Pacific Northwest during the holiday season, and the only way to store packages in the system was inside the limited number of spare trailers that could be parked at the facility.
I now use this industrial-level laser particle counter to verify my indoor air quality: https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality-monitors/par...
I currently live on an arterial road, about 2 blocks from a major Interstate (I-5).
I'm very concerned about air pollution. Pollution here (Seattle, Downtown / Capitol Hill area) is bad enough I can see it in the form of black dust which comes in even through closed windows. And that's just the particles big enough to see.
I placed 4 HEPA filters throughout the house, and I run them constantly on a low setting. Based on square footage, I would only need 1-2 of these filters. But I wanted extra filter capacity in each main room.
One annoyance is that my particle counter returns a particle count (per cubic meter, I think?) which doesn't have an exact conversion to the standardized AQI (Air Quality Index). I found a plausible conversion guide, surely not exact but close enough.
Here's what I learned:
- Indoor air filters make a dramatic improvement to air quality. When the outdoor particle count is ~1M, my indoor count can be well under 100K. That's 90% reduction.
– When I approximate AQI, it's common for outdoor air (https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm) to be in the "Moderate" scale, and my indoor air to be at the floor (best) of "Healthy".
– The IQAir HealthPro Plus (https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air-purifiers/healthpro-series) is incredibly effective. It lowers particle count to zero at its outlet.
– My other air filters are still effective, even though they don't get the particle count down to zero. They are the RabbitAir minusa2, and two Blueair Classic 205 units.
I was also very surprised when I carried the particle counter around my neighborhood. The quiet streets often have worse air quality than the arterial! And the particle count on the arterial was just as bad as on the Interstate 5 overpass. I think the better airflow on the arterials may help get the pollution out of the area. I really expected the quite streets to have fewer pollution particles.
I have not ventured into testing for C02, other gasses, or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). But I'm very curious and may try to measure that myself someday soon.
More accurate: Tesla's Model 3 now includes wireless phone charger
1. Ads for competitors. Sure, show me ads. But don't replace my exact match with an ad that takes up the whole screen. As a user who searches for apps, I find this outrageous. If the App Store was solely an advertising network I would understand. But Apple takes a 30% commission! Get out of my way and let me find what I'm looking for, then take your commission.
2. Upgrade pricing. I'm tired of abandoned apps, especially those I paid for initially. I don't expect developers to work for free (nor do I want to have 100+ subscriptions). Let me upgrade to major new versions.
3. Subscriptions for everything. Ugh. Sometimes it makes a lot of sense to buy something outright and use it for its useful life. There are many apps I never use because I don't want yet another subscription, but I would have happily purchased.
4. Trials. Not on Wil Shipley's list, but how on earth do we not get trials? I don't want in-app purchases to "unlock" the app. I just want to try it out for a couple weeks before I buy. I have foregone many possibly great apps because I couldn't be confident they would work for me. And I've wasted money on apps that looked like they would work for me, but didn't.
EDIT: I see trials have been possible for 2 years! I had no idea. I guess I haven't encountered any, which seems odd.
As a user, I feel that Apple has created a race to the bottom and they've made the app ecosystem way less valuable to me. I would be happier if upgrades and trials allowed me to spend more money to get more valuable iOS apps. Instead I regret some purchases, avoid some purchases, can't tell how much apps actually cost, have to find new apps when old ones are abandoned, and don't trust that I'm able to discover and buy the best apps.
I had always thought of AirDrop as a straight file transfer, but that's not the case.
What happened to AirDrop? It used to "just work" and now it rarely works.
In the last two days I experienced: - Unable to discover devices (a constant AirDrop frustration) - Transferred a video from iPhone to Mac, had to wait for video to be converted first? - Transferred video from (different) iPhone to Mac, transfer repeatedly resulted in a corrupt 0 byte file
AirDrop has become totally unreliable.
Clones: If you shop through referral links (e.g. click through from The Wirecutter) or seek out a specific model number from a major brand you won't experience the clone problem.
But how confident do you feel starting your search at Amazon for items like Bluetooth Headphones? There are 20 pages of results that look identical. Or how about a search for Bike Tail Light?
I didn't get a chance to use Maven but I loved using ReachNow, Car2Go and LimePod in Seattle before they each shut down.
I would think the biggest strength of free floating car sharing would be the utilization rate of of the vehicles compared to private ownership.
Looking at the vehicle availability maps, it was clear that there were a lot of trips taking place. Of course some cars ended up in low-demand areas, but on average it seemed there was a lot of rental activity.
I am really curious to know what didn't work, from a business model perspective. None of the shutdown announcements have provided any specific details.
The main board had failed so the screen was black and the backlight cycled on and off. After disconnecting the main board, the backlight stayed on. I am using the existing LED lights, but may replace them with the excellent color quality LEDs recommended by DIY Perks.
Then again this NY Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/drones-FAA-colorado-ne...) said "local officials were studying the flight path of the drones and coordinating across county lines to figure out where they were coming from."
If they're crossing county lines, that seems like a long distance.
The pattern sounds predictable based on the reporting. Could a sheriff helicopter track them to where they land? Could a photographer team up with a searchlight operator to get a clear close-up photo of a drone, maybe identify the drone make/model, then start to identify the types of equipment (e.g. photo, lidar, other sensors) for clues?
The other puzzling part of this is that if a well-funded entity wanted to test in secret, they could probably find unpopulated areas to test over. Unless the testing relates to features of a populated area.
Apparel companies are starting to participate in the secondary market for their used gear, why can't Sonos do something similar?
Examples: - Patagonia Worn Wear (https://wornwear.patagonia.com) - REI Used Gear (https://www.rei.com/used/shop/gear) - Arc'teryx Rock Solid (https://rocksolid.arcteryx.com)
As it stands, Sonos is effectively buying their old speakers and then throwing them away. Could they not recoup their costs and avoid e-waste by simply selling the used Sonos devices into a market that can't afford the brand new ones? I thought this is how most phone trade-in programs worked, which seems like a mature process now.
Car2Go launched in Seattle in 2012. The model was innovative (one-way trips! park almost anywhere for free!). But they had poor reliability. I think the cars were connected via some German cell plan with internationally roaming on T-mobile, and the failure rate (unable to access the car, "phantom" car not really at location) was 5-10%, which is pretty bad.
Car2Go was also very unresponsive to customer needs. They refused to create an airport drop point (such a great and obvious use case!) and seemed unconcerned by their poor reliability.
Enter ReachNow. The competition was exactly what Car2Go needed. ReachNow added an airport drop point quickly, then Car2Go finally added their own airport drop.
ReachNow was plagued by long transaction times (e.g. 2 minutes of wait time from unlock to engine start – this is a LONG time when someone is waiting for your street parking spot). They finally fixed their startup times on many of the vehicles.
Then Lime entered with LimePod, which was the low-price option but with fewer cars. In total, there were well over 1K cars between all the services, and availability was great.
When ReachNow consumed Car2Go, I was worried things were going to go downhill due to lack of competition. Then they shut down ReachNow and started a confusing rebrand, then Lime left, and now Car2Go / Share Now is leaving.
I wish they would have first tried charging enough to make it a viable business. I wonder how much higher the prices would need to be.