This rings true with my experience also. A couple weeks ago I bought a bunch of computer parts online, the majority from NewEgg and a MSI motherboard from Amazon. Hooked up everything and it wouldn't post. Thinking it was a power supply I swapped out and tested the new power supply in my old PC and it worked, so I took the old power supply and put it in my new PC and it didn't work. Returned the motherboard to Amazon and bought different brand from Best Buy and it's been working like a champ ever since.
On a different shipment from Amazon I received a small bathroom rug. The weave of the design was off by over an inch on two of the sides. I've never had such bad experiences in the past from Amazon than the last couple months.
When the notifications say 'In Transit' they aren't passing through a FedEx building, but rather are sending GPS ping notifications every 12 hours. Your package was most likely on a slower mode of transportation such as rail or a trailer. This is done to show progress on slower routes because sometimes there could be a couple days between a hub touch.
This reminds me of the E-13B font [1] seen on checks since the early 1960s, but in a square format. The goals are similar, produce machine readable and human readable text. There have been attempts to also make a version with alphabetical characters as well in OCR-A [2] in the late 1960s.
You're on point about the strategic focus. Think long term, who these shipping companies want to align with: Target, Walmart, other companies with physical presence and a need to grow their e-commerce to compete with Amazon. By not renewing the Amazon contract you can focus on helping your long term partners and let Amazon deal with figuring out how to continue providing the same level of customer service with it's relatively young last mile delivery portion of shipping. And any bad Amazon customer experiences that result due to the last mile delivery damage their brand, and can result in lost sales, hopefully a gain then to one of these shipping companies long term partners.
Five years ago there was a similar situation with the transportation of prescription medications. FedEx put out a public statement that they intended to fight the Department of Justice order:
"We want to be clear what’s at stake here: the government is suggesting that FedEx assume criminal responsibility for the legality of the contents of the millions of packages that we pick up and deliver every day. We are a transportation company – we are not law enforcement. We have no interest in violating the privacy of our customers. We continue to stand ready and willing to support and assist law enforcement. We cannot, however, do the job of law enforcement ourselves." [1]
Ultimately two years later the DOJ dropped the charges against Fedex.
"In court on Friday, [U.S. District Court Judge Charles] Breyer said FedEx was 'factually innocent.' He said the company repeatedly asked the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to give it the name of a customer that was shipping illegal drugs so it could stop working with the person, but the agency was either unwilling or unable to do so." [2]
If this plays out similarly, FedEx will use a similar blacklist mechanism to comply with the law, but is suing right now to prevent any backlash that will inevitably occur when the blacklist doesn't contain an illegal entity and it's discovered there was a shipment that slipped through the cracks.
"Export restriction rules “essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally,” it said in a filing. ... FedEx responded by saying publicly that it would deliver all products made by Huawei to addresses other than those of Huawei and affiliates placed on the U.S. national security blacklist." (from the main article in this thread)
There's nothing wrong with Web Design 2.0, in fact I prefer it when I need to interact with information on a website. When I use Netflix to browse for a movie or TV show, linear is good. I don't need free positioning, overlapping elements. If the goal of the site is to showcase creativity and art, Web Design 3.0 is a possible tool in the toolkit.
In December of 1994 the 10 year minus 2 year was at 0.15 (currently it is 0.18 in Feb 2018), but then we had to wait for the next recession until 2001. It could go back up like in August of 1984 or January 1995, or continue downward and put us in a recession in a couple years.
My guess is that is has to do with IKEA's improving smart home trend [0]. I like the fact that the work with all three major platforms so I don't necessarily have to be all in on one if I decide to switch in a couple of years: "Trådfri [has] compatibility across Apple HomeKit, Alexa, and Google Assistant".
The 10-2 treasury yield spread looks like a good indicator, with the exception of 1994/1995.
In 1995 there were fears of a recession due to the Fed increasing rates further: "Indeed, if there is a risk to what is generally seen as a solid if not glowing outlook for the stock market this year, it is that in its effort to rein in growth, the Fed might push interest rates too high, forcing the economy into recession." [1]
The Fed put the brakes on raising the Fed Funds rate in 1995 [2]. Subsequently from 1995 - 2001 the S&P 500 index went from 465 to 1425 [3]. I wonder what made 1995 different than 2018. Being in tech, one obvious thing leaps out which is increased investment in capital related to the commercialization of the Internet, the dot com boom and bubble [4]. In 2018, is there a new opportunity to spur growth again, or will 2018 be another 2006, 2000, 1989, etc?
If you're looking for problems to solve in the transportation / shipping context, one that comes to mind is estimated delivery. Try predicting the day (maybe even down to the hour) of when something will arrive at its destination once it enters your company's network. It may require feeding it the origin and destination, the product mix in the trailer, customer priority, weather conditions, time of year (peak season?), etc.
I agree; it reminds me of the Dropbox comment from 2007 [1]:
> I have a few qualms with this app:
> 1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
Agreed, caller ID should not be able to be spoofed. My rule of thumb is if it is important, they will leave a voicemail with a call back number. This screens out 90% of the spoofed calls I get. The visual voicemail is a nice feature too, I can immediately check the voicemail that is left and decide if I need to follow up, or if it is spam.
This would be a big feature for me, whether spam blocking is done by the telephone companies or by Apple. I don't know why they aren't more aggressive about it either; it's not like the USPS, where the USPS makes more money off every piece of spam they deliver. Reducing spam calls would increase customer satisfaction, enhance the brand, and provide a competitive edge in the marketplace.
I'm not sure I'd want to live in an old mall, but I could see them being purposed for office space. Parking is already taken care of, and most have bus routes already in place. The existing food court would be ready for new tenants. Other types of tenants could fill where other retail (e.g. clothing, toys) once occupied, such as a gym/fitness company, FedEx/UPS offices, office supply stores, etc.
The turn based gameplay, square tile floor design, randomized levels and loot, fantasy medieval world of sword and sorcery remind me of an earlier 1990s game called Castle of the Winds - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds