Recent submissions

Comment · 10 years ago
They push 10,000+ parcels like that a month, and send their shipping out to bid every year, helps to have big companies ordering tons of hardware from ya. 3 years ago they were on DHL which was great for DHL same day, I could order something at 8am and have it at the customer's site later that evening.
Comment · 10 years ago
It seems by "Open Platform" they mean shoving all your data onto their chat platform, basically an open API. That definitely is not an open platform in my book, as you can't federate, run your own, etc.
Comment · 10 years ago
I see some of the upsides of both Slack and Gitter, but having used both I still find IRC or a Signal group much easier and more convenient overall. Perhaps its the familiarity, or that I find both to be yet another tab to have open/app to install & maintain, but I just can't call myself a fan.
Comment · 10 years ago
Definitely, you should be able to get a shipping price without going into the checkout, Amazon makes it quite difficult compared to Aliexpress & eBay when it comes to finding out shipping prices, to the point that I avoid shopping on there with a rare exception occurring every 6 months or so.

For the average shopper, pricing in shipping and sales tax will make them buy more online. Breaking out sales tax has caused a 9% sales drop in states Amazon charges sales tax in.

Comment · 10 years ago
Why do hundreds of pregnant women die every year in the US, but significantly less die in Singapore, Greece, Canada, Ireland, etc? This shouldn't be a thing, and we shouldn't be this far behind other countries on this, its not an impossible problem to halve or even cut into a quarter that death rate. This isn't even discussing complications of pregnancy or infant mortality, both of which we are not doing amazing at.
Comment · 10 years ago
Dude, you can't even buy a crackerbox in Seattle for 300k euros anymore, a 500sqft apartment has gone from 270k euros to 400k euros in the past 2 years, and that is before the 4500 euros you'll pay to go to an "exclusive" wine tasting/auction to bid on the few units that are up for sale.
Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
Free shipping is a lie, but the average consumer thinks of dealing with shipping costs separately as pesky, and Amazon & eBay have configured their fees to charge you more on any extra shipping line item to encourage sellers to make shipping "free".

I don't see "free" shipping going away, nor do I see Amazon's new delivery service succeeding where DHL and other have floundered in the past, since you need a certain volume in that business to even be viable, and Amazon has stated they can't push that volume alone to make running a shipping service make sense.

What might happen, and what I hope happens is the lower end, smaller businesses get better next day and 2 day shipping prices. Currently, from one wholesaler I can order a 50lb box of hardware, and UPS charges them $21 to $23 to ship it from Chicago to Seattle in the span of about 18hrs and get it on my doorstep.

Another much smaller vendor I deal with can't get anywhere near that pricing, half that weight/size box will run me $150 easily, with ground (a week and change) being $40 usually for a 25lb box from them.

Edit: Another layer to this is USPS and China Post teamed up a while back and offer Chinese sellers dirt cheap ePacket shipping, where 1lb of goods can be moved to the US for $5, whereas USPS charges $50 to the American seller to ship something to China [1]. Essentially, it makes American online sellers uncompetitive in our own market. This is why people like Trump, since he says he'll put a 35% tariff on foreign imports and end programs like ePacket (not supporting him though, just to be clear).

[1] - https://www.skubana.com/e-commerce-trends/the-usps-epacket-p...

Comment · 10 years ago
So overvalued property in the current economic context combined with unprecedented (for Greece) property taxes is making home ownership a burden? Plus the maintenance costs wipe out what remains of the value.
Comment · 10 years ago
With austerity feeding on itself as it has been for many years in Greece, the rental market seems to have become flooded with properties. If your citizens have no money, and your economy is shrinking in the double digits every year for years on end, how does anyone do anything economically?
Comment · 10 years ago
What area are you in? Compared to Seattle/Portland/San Diego prices, 40k euros seems cheap for a 1963 670sqft apt. A similar house in Tacoma would run 110k euros right now, and it is a terrible location.
Comment · 10 years ago
Well, you've got this amazing compiler that just likes to change things you write, they're known as politicians :P
Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 10 years ago
Not every investment will be successful either, as any person with a basic sense of business will know.
Comment · 10 years ago
Dude, grow up. You do not have to live under govt rule, if you choose to follow an ideology that would rather see government not exist, you can and should fully adhere to your ideology and move to such an area. They do exist in Latin America and other places, and you are not living your ideology or helping it in any way if you won't support it in the most basic of ways.

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