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.
Starlink's AI customer service agent confidently gave me incorrect information about shipping time estimates. It would have been better to have no answer at all than to have a broken promise.
I think this comment references something many people don't realize: Even items that say "Ships from
Amazon, Sold by Amazon" could be counterfeit, because the inventory from third party sellers is co-mingled with Amazon's own inventory.
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".
In my experience, desperate people cut the cords off of perfectly good appliances to sell the copper as scrap. Copper wire fetches something like ~$1/lb as scrap. It's infuriating when they cut it right at the connection to the appliance, making it too time consuming to test.
A label of "Broken" or "Works" or "Missing X" is so much more helpful for appliances left out.
This solves a huge annoyance I've had: swap a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse between multiple laptops, without manually un0paring / re-pairing. I have a personal "hot desk" at home. I want to be able to plug in any laptop to the large monitor, and have the wireless keyboard/mouse on that desk instantly work. And when I leave the desk with my laptop, I don't want that keyboard/mouse connected anymore.
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!
The reviews suggest this $250 toaster isn't any better:
"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.
The recent outrage over RealPage seems misplaced, at least here in Seattle where demand for housing is so much higher than supply. There are so many restrictions on new housing. We're considered a liberal city, but plenty of our residents have really conservative views around housing and work against increasing housing supply.
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?)
Based on some of the follow-ups you've posted here, it sounds like the crucial factor is the 1200€ authorization and capture from PayPal.
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?
I've noticed a problem when I try to buy tools (especially automotive tools): The only tools available locally are cheap and crappy. I know they are crappy because half the reviews state that it didn't even work once.
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.
Looks great, I'll give it a try for my next scraping project. My favorite of all these types of tools was kimonolabs (http://kimonolabs.com) before they were acquired and shut down.
When I found pine nuts for only $16/lb at Trader Joe's, I thought I'd hit the jackpot. I made pesto, and even snacked on the pine nuts while I cooked.
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.
The concept of installation was very simple – just put clips on wires.
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 started using the Emporia Vue 2 about a month ago. Overall I'd say it's great. I hooked up a few circuits individually and I got crucial insight into unusually high energy usage from a heat pump + air handler + auxiliary heater setup.
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.
UPS and FedEx don't really have warehouse space for things to sit. The facilities are all designed to unload, sort, and load parcels as efficiently as possible.
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 got the particle counter used on eBay for about $100. I know it's totally unnecessary to have that industrial version, but it was cheaper (used) than I could buy their consumer-level AirVisual Pro(https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality-monitors/airvisual-pro).
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".
– 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.
I'm not an app developer, but I am equally frustrated as a user on several of Wil Shipley's key points:
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.