I worked at a cable company in my youth. This was the obvious response. Everyone seemed to think that if they could just have a-la-carte cable that they’d be happy (and thought that they’d pay less). What most wouldn’t believe is that a LOT of those channels you didn’t care about were either free to the provider, or in the case of things like QVC were actually subsidizing more expensive channels (ESPN being the biggest one).

I won’t even click on links to Twitter anymore. I had an account in the beginning but even back then the signal to noise ratio was stupid low. Now It’s all bots and nazis.

I went with the BezosBoxHomeAsssssistant. … it sucks too. The challenge to my mind is that it’s hard to make any profit on these things, so it’s hard to spend the dev and server $$$ required to actually make the systems do what they should.

I had two Pebble Steel watches. One just up and died one day and the other slowly failed as the buttons stopped working. I knew it was fixable, but with the sale to Fitbit happening, I Switched to AppleWatch. I do miss some things (battery life!) but all in all I’m not unhappy with my Apple Watch.

Actually the low cost part of this was that they weren’t upgraded cells. Just tested-good cells from other battery packs. Most of the time it’s just a couple cells in the bigger battery that have issues, and they take those out of the pool and make a good amount of $$$ because we were required to send back all of our cells. Assuming that of the 26 (iirc) cells that 3 or 4 were bad that’s a big profit margin for sure. The car worked great after swapping them out.

I replaced the main battery in a Gen1 Prius. Fiddly. Had to get a strong buddy to help lift it in and out of the car, but we did it in a long weekend. A full set of ‘used but tested’ cells cost something like $750 but that was probably 8 years ago.

I’m wondering who defines “luxury items”. I’d currently put a trip to the dentist and a car with under 120k miles in the luxury category.

Yeah, 10 years is too short. 18 sounds pretty good. I’d also want to give them a full retirement. Ostensibly, they’d be less likely to sell influence.

The BIG unintended consequence here is that this makes starting a new party just to leech off the government a big target. Who cares if you never get anyone elected, so long as you can have government paid salaries and airtime.

Not to mention the doors and corners…

I’m not willing to use it now, for free… not sure if this plan will incentivize me to join up.

I’m on windows, love it or hate it, but I don’t even remember the last time I used the start menu.

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Gonna go ahead and say that this is the BEST outcome for the rest of us. Employees and vendors for Twitter got the short end of the straw, but society as a whole would be blessed if Twitter went the way of the Dodo bird.

I wish I could get a NEW 90s era Honda cheaply.

All good points. I have a nice home office and a desk at HQ that I can go to. I guess I’m not the target market.

McGill?

For a client meeting I prefer a nice lunch place or just to meet at their office? I do have a FEW clients that work out of their homes. They’ve always been happy with whatever coffee shop is close to them.

I’m pretty much the target for this, I travel a lot for work and it’d be nice to have a place to “office” out of, but the competition here is:

1. Free - Even after checking out of my hotel, the lobby always has a corner or two to work in and decent wi-if. 1a) I have status at one chain and they’re always great about just letting me walk in to any of the chain and suck up some internet and plug in my laptop, even if I wasn’t staying there. Bonus is that they usually have coffee!

2. Free - my car. With tethering my phone to my laptop, I’ve done more calls than I care to admit by just finding a random shady place to park the car and get to work. 2a) The park (when it’s nice enough outside)

3. Free- Libraries - The public library system is great. Not a good place to take calls, but if you need a place with a chair and internet to do some work, it’s an option.

4. Free - Client’s offices. I have a good enough relationship with a number of clients that I can ask to take over an empty desk (one even has an empty office with a KILLER view of the city that they’re just fine with me taking over for a couple hours.

5. Cheap - Coffee shops. Buy a drink (bonus) and grab a seat for a bit. They’re super abundant and you can almost always find one close to your next meeting.

I’m certain that WeWork has its benefits, but competing with free is pretty hard.

This is the key. There certainly were NOT 100mm people that signed up of their own accord.

The size almost seems like a feature. If it’s durable at all, you make a scale-maile coat that dehumidifies the sweat off of you and provides power for some sensors or something? The article mentions a washing machine size box that would power your whole house (but I’ll bet getting humidity to the middle would be a challenge for that form factor.