Random Chat, Thoughts, Posts, and/or Rants Thread

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Talk about inflation, taxes and theft.

hmmm…

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1676811236191903745

View: https://twitter.com/fulovitboss/status/1676811236191903745?s=61&t=Li58PzJTMBtZ7lBFAgD1Wg

So... fixed rate debt gonna be wiped out by hyperinflation? You love to see it!

 

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[Creative_Name]

I’m going to post an unpopular opinion about European “luxury” cars.

There’s nothing luxurious about visiting a dealership 4+ times a year.

There’s nothing luxurious about putting more expensive gas in your car.

There’s nothing luxurious about weird a$$ tire sizes.

There’s nothing luxurious about multiple ridiculously expensive batteries.

There’s nothing luxurious about chasing a problem with several “we can’t recreate the problem” technician reports.

There’s nothing luxurious about not trusting my supposedly nice car.

We choose my suburban for every road trip ever.

I think this is a popular opinion that needed to be expressed.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

Have any of you used web scanning tools to see if confidential company info has leaked on the internet? I'm just referring to text content - not audio or video.

Example - a company has a proprietary formula for making cement - and they want to check if that formula has shown up anywhere online.

I could just make a web scraper to do this along with Google APIs, but I wanted to see if there was already existing software for this.

Currently I'm looking at plagiarism detection software, online brand management software, and digital rights management software.

 

[Kak]

I think this is a popular opinion that needed to be expressed.

Hope so.

Striving for “this” is ridiculous. When you buy a Mercedes, or probably most other European cars, you buy yourself new required effort that is unrequired with a different choice. Basically, in a lot of ways, the opposite of luxury.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

Hope so.

Striving for “this” is ridiculous. When you buy a Mercedes, or probably most other European cars, you buy yourself new required effort that is unrequited with a different choice. Basically, in a lot of ways, the opposite of luxury.

Luxury cars just like luxury girlfriends are high maintenance bro — Mercedes would argue this is part of the experience of going luxury

 

[Kak]

Luxury cars just like luxury girlfriends are high maintenance bro — Mercedes would argue this is part of the experience of going luxury

I know, they did when I got mad about them chewing up tires.

No… Line your frickin car up better!

 

[new dawn]

Tried to log into ChatGPT to do some zipcode lookups and it said it was too busy. Instantly signed up to the $20/mth.

It's amazing what happens when you get used to a free tool and then it's suddenly unavailable.

I recommend you try using chatgpt in a tab in incognito mode, if I'm not wrong that solved several errors

 

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[Dockid]

I've been interested in starting a home service business so I setup a website for carpet, gutter and window cleaning. I offer instant online quoting on the website by making the user answer a few q's (E.g For carpet cleaning one question I ask is: How many bedrooms do you need cleaned?) they finish the questions in about 20-30 seconds and get a quote with an option to continue with their booking.

Just setup PPC ads today. First booking for a $97 job (1 bedroom carpet clean), the lead cost me $1.97. I'm just testing the waters right now and I can't fulfill the service but this looks interesting.

 

[Andy Black]

I've been interested in starting a home service business so I setup a website for carpet, gutter and window cleaning. I offer instant online quoting on the website by making the user answer a few q's (E.g For carpet cleaning one question I ask is: How many bedrooms do you need cleaned?) they finish the questions in about 20-30 seconds and get a quote with an option to continue with their booking.

Just setup PPC ads today. First booking for a $97 job (1 bedroom carpet clean), the lead cost me $1.97. I'm just testing the waters right now and I can't fulfill the service but this looks interesting.

Ring round and give the lead to someone who can serve it?

 

[Dockid]

Ring round and give the lead to someone who can serve it?

Yeah I'll probably do that. That's what I do for my other projects. One of my SEO experiments is a moving company website in Cork. Its getting me 20 leads/mo organically, I send them to a local guy for free.

 

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[GuestUser4aMPs1]

View attachment 50065

Came back to ask, what exactly am I looking at and what does it mean?

BTB sometimes skips over the normie explanations.

 

[Dockid]

Ring round and give the lead to someone who can serve it?

Gave it to a local carpet cleaner who got the $97 job for tomorrow. Tested window cleaning ads and got my first booking request for $.97. Its a six week recurring service at a premium price. Competition is low outside of Dublin.

 

[Fox]

Came back to ask, what exactly am I looking at and what does it mean?

BTB sometimes skips over the normie explanations.

I believe in your have a 1m invested in Treasury bonds you are getting $54,000 per year return.

So his point was anyone with large sums of cash doesn't even need to work anymore.

With 3m invested you would be making $150k+ a year guaranteed from the US gov.

 

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[Isaac Odongo]

I believe in your have a 1m invested in Treasury bonds you are getting $54,000 per year return.

So his point was anyone with large sums of cash doesn't even need to work anymore.

With 3m invested you would be making $150k+ a year guaranteed from the US gov.

Same more or less true with treasury bonds in Uganda, at bank of Uganda.

 

[Isaac Odongo]

Why does KDP reject the country code for Uganda, 256? Says it doesn't recognise it. Thing's pissing me off.

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

Whatever happened to @RHL ? Definitely some of the best posts on the forum

 

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[Isaac Odongo]

Whatever happened to @RHL ? Definitely some of the best posts on the forum

Has over 1000 posts, but a reaction score of over 10000. GRAND!!

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

I believe in your have a 1m invested in Treasury bonds you are getting $54,000 per year return.

Same more or less true with treasury bonds in Uganda, at bank of Uganda.

Holy

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

Why does KDP reject the country code for Uganda, 256? Says it doesn't recognise it. Thing's pissing me off.

If you need it for a 2FA phone verification or need a phone on file for some reason, you can get a cheap voip number or a one-time text with something like onlinesim.io

 

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[Isaac Odongo]

If you need it for a 2FA phone verification or need a phone on file for some reason, you can get a cheap voip number or a one-time text with something like onlinesim.io

I have visited the site.

They request to create account.

Select country of residence inorder to buy a number. They request email as well.

Will they give the same 256 code that amazon hates or what?

 

[GuestUser4aMPs1]

I have visited the site.

They request to create account.

Select country of residence inorder to buy a number. They request email as well.

Will they give the same 256 code that amazon hates or what?

No, you'll be able to pick from many different countries. If you just needed a phone number for SMS outside uganda, you can simply order one for the UK, US, or Brazil, for example.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

Whatever happened to @RHL ? Definitely some of the best posts on the forum

Wasn't he scaling up a call center for some huge opportunity that he was working on?

I agree that it would be great to see him post again.

 

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[Two Dog]

The amount of time spent being an unwilling part of the technology automation machine is really starting to piss me off.

The phone trees were bad enough. It's next level nowadays: confirm text, survey text, 2FA, authorize suspicious credit card charge, confirm address change, 2FA, confirm dentist appointment, opt out, opt out, 2FA, confirm delivery, confirm purchase, fill out request form, opt out, confirm email, sign here, print, fill out and mail form with a check (life insurance?!?), show scan code to return, punch in parking space number...

And it all starts again tomorrow. W.T.F.

Screw ChatGPT. Where the magical AI to do all that crap for me?!?

 

[monnffffiiiiiii]

This carried me further every time I was tempted to quit.

It's already been shown but it's a great reminder.

Source

 

[RicardoGrande]

The Instant Pot and the Miracle Kitchen Devices of Yesteryear

Preparing meals is a Sisyphean task, and anything that promises to make it faster, or easier, or better, or healthier, or more fun, is irresistible.

www.newyorker.com

Instant pot filing for chapter 11.
What I really took interest in was a statement that reflected my own experience: Instant pots were generally well made, quality products. I have one that's closing in on a decade old that's still kicking.
I'm a little disappointed because a dream that's been in the back of mind has been bringing back consumer goods with the quality we used to see up until the 80s (remember your grandmother's deep freezer from the 70s that's somehow still kicking?).
I can't tell if it was poor management and shareholder expectations of LINE GO UP on their part or they saturated own their own market, but definitely something to keep in mind.

 

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[MattR82]

@Lex DeVille
As of 5 minutes ago, I am alllllll aboard the Siteground hate train....

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPjL909DiVI

 

[JAJT]

What I really took interest in was a statement that reflected my own experience: Instant pots were generally well made, quality products. I have one that's closing in on a decade old that's still kicking.

One thing that always stuck out to me about Instant Pot was how cheap they were. It never made any sense to me that a device that well built with that many features regularly sold for $70 - $100 with sales all the time.

Maybe that's why they got so popular initially but I honestly feel it would have done just fine at $175+ like the popular air fryers and such.

Shit, there are blenders that go for $500 - $900 and most people use them a LOT less than an instant pot.

I've never been a huge Instant Pot fan myself, but almost everyone else I know is and I'm SURE they'd have spent more if the price was higher.

 

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[loop101]

Oppenheimer is getting good reviews.

Might be one of those movies that really benefits from a big screen.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYPbbksJxIg

 

[Bekit]

The Instant Pot and the Miracle Kitchen Devices of Yesteryear

Preparing meals is a Sisyphean task, and anything that promises to make it faster, or easier, or better, or healthier, or more fun, is irresistible.

www.newyorker.com

Instant pot filing for chapter 11.
What I really took interest in was a statement that reflected my own experience: Instant pots were generally well made, quality products. I have one that's closing in on a decade old that's still kicking.
I'm a little disappointed because a dream that's been in the back of mind has been bringing back consumer goods with the quality we used to see up until the 80s (remember your grandmother's deep freezer from the 70s that's somehow still kicking?).
I can't tell if it was poor management and shareholder expectations of LINE GO UP on their part or they saturated own their own market, but definitely something to keep in mind.

I got an instant pot last year. It was given to me as a gift.

And I noticed a small detail at the time that stood out to me and made me wonder how much longer the company would last.

I had heard about the Instant Pot hype, but I never felt like bothering to buy one for myself. I'm the kind of person who will drop good money on good quality kitchen stuff, like my All-Clad cookware and my Wusthof knives, but I'm NOT the kind of person to own a Keurig or an Air Fryer or a Panini Grill or, y'know, all those "gadgets." To me, they're just another gimmick to take up countertop space.

But hey, I received it as a gift, so I was in the process of setting it up, but it was from a very "neutral" frame of mind. It wasn't like I was "hyped to get this thing I've been longing for and saving up for."

The little booklet that came in the packaging said that for Instant Pot recipes, you can go to the Instant Pot website.

I tried checking the website for the recipes, and wow. Epic fail.

Yes, there were recipes. 1000+ of them.

But you couldn't filter in any way that was useful, and you couldn't use the search to find ANYTHING. It was the lamest, least organized thing I had ever seen. You couldn't even set it to exclude the Air Fryer recipes from the Instant Pot recipes.

The lack of attention to detail in that area struck me as a likely sign of ailing and disorganized management in the company as a whole. When people who are tasked with a certain area (like the recipes on the website) are not able to execute in a way that's competent and useful, it can tend to be a reflection of a deeper problem.

Why does this matter? Why would I consider the useless recipes on their site as a sign of anything?

• It means they're not thinking through the customer experience.
• The natural first step from the customer's point of view is, "How do I use this thing? What can I cook with it?"
• And the natural first place that brand-new customer would look is the manufacturer's website.
• But that brand-new customer is presented with an absolute train wreck on the Instant Pot recipes site.
• Wow. Way to make a first impression.
• Either the company doesn't care, or they're that incompetent.
• As a customer, I'm left thinking, "If I can't even use your website to figure out how to make RICE with this thing (when there's a "Rice" button on the front of the unit for crying out loud), why would I trust you to be paying attention to the safety and the engineering that went into this thing?"

Fine, I'll go to Google and find a mommy blogger who has a good instant pot rice recipe.

But the deeper issue with this is, it shows that Instant Pot didn't navigate the transition from "early adopter" to "mainstream."

By the time I got an Instant Pot, it was mainstream.

But I was still a first-time customer.

And I didn't get the kind of experience that you'd expect from an established, mainstream brand.

If this was a kickstarter, sure, fine, I wouldn't expect a thoughtfully-curated, well-organized recipe site. But for an established brand, I would expect their recipes to be the amazing, definitive, tested ones. That's how it is everywhere else. Vitamix has an awesome set of recipes that come with the blender when you get it. If you get a waffle maker, you get a few waffle recipes that are tested and proven to work well with that waffle maker. For that matter, even the back of the sugar label or the chocolate chips package always has a cookie recipe that's guaranteed to turn out AMAZING. Because usually, when a company bothers to publish a recipe, they care to make sure it's a good one, because it reflects on them.

So the fact that Instant Pot couldn't pull this off is, to me, evidence of systemic internal disorganization and incompetence.

You know what attitude it also hints to? "Oh well, they already bought it now. The sale is complete and that's all we care about. Their ability to actually make good rice is none of our concern."

That's short-sighted thinking. It reflects an unawareness that the continued momentum of the brand depends on them continuing to be perceived as someone that people know, like, and trust.

It's also greedy thinking. It reflects that they care about making the sale, and that's it.

So with all these considerations, I wasn't surprised when this announcement came out.

Business lessons:

1. Don't forget about your customer. If Instant Pot had not lost sight of the very basic sequence of actions that their customers are going to follow, they might have had the foresight to provide a delightful experience with the right amount of hand-holding and guidance as customers use their Instant Pot for the first time. Would fixing their recipes have saved them from bankruptcy? No, probably not. But addressing the underlying issue that led to them being ok with a problematic recipe site in the first place? That might have made a difference.
2. Adapt to the difference between being in the "early adopter" vs "mainstream" phase. If you plan to be in it for the long-haul, you need to keep cultivating your identity as a trusted brand.
3. Don't be greedy. Is it technically true that Instant Pot doesn't have to provide recipes? Yes. Would it have cost them money to organize their recipes in a way that was useful? Yes. But the attitude that "they already bought it and I've collected the money and that's all that's important to me" caused them to be unable to see the way this was shooting themselves in the foot.