reeddavid

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.

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.