181–190 of 209 posts
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It's not orbiting Earth, it's orbiting the sun. I think it's fair to say that it would be the most ambitious space mission we've ever taken to try and retrieve it, at least when not adjusting for our increased technical sophistication since the appolo era...
Buck Rogers 2.0
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Pretty much. Same deal on the Corolla. Just out of curiosity I checked safelite.com and they don’t even offer a replace option on this year/make/model. Only repair, and this crack is well beyond the repair limit.
Return the Corolla while you still can. This is hot garbage.
TBH, this kind of thing happens pretty regularly with various parts. Usually the delay doesn't end up being 6 months, but often those kinds of estimates are on the pessimistic side.
It isn't unusual for places like Safelite to be dependent upon the manufacturer's glass, especially on newer cars.
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If I buy and you lease for 4 years who will come out better at the end if keep mine for 8-10 years?
Uhm..........that heavily depends on many factors, some of which can be hard to predict. Do you already have an answer in mind?
On mobile and I can’t work out the math right now.
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It's pretty unreasonable for many components in a car if you are paying for it yourself. There's a Model S owner who is on the 7th drive unit replacement for his car. This is a $15,000 unit. These cars are too expensive to be disposable, but that's where they are headed because parts are difficult or impossible to obtain out of warranty.
Right, that isnt a car that never breaks down though. Teslas might not be at the required reliability to day, EVs one day might be. Re price, an interesting point. Do I not repair my TV because its so reliable, or because the replacement is cheap?
As a happy car DIYer I really appreciate when parts come in small replaceable units that I can swap out.
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That's why I'm really interested in leasing one next year - if anything breaks, the leasing company has to fix it or provide me with an alternative, they own the car after all. I really want a Model 3 but I would never buy it to own.
There is a tidy profit for the leasing company for taking this fear over for you.
It’ll be particularly interesting to see what happens when Tesla starts leasing as luxury cars tend to offer very good leasing terms when compared to the MSRP.
A lot of early adopters were probably worried that Tesla would go out of business and they wouldn't be able to get parts. Tesla is still in business and there still aren't parts. Hopefully enough of the current Tesla models will end up on the road to make it profitable for aftermarket suppliers to make some parts. So far it doesn't seem like that is happening at very much scale.
Lots of would-be buyers won't purchase until the supply lines and insane repair wait times are fixed. Source: I am one, as are many of my friends in Seattle.
I had been driving BMWs for the last 10 years and while it hasn’t always been trouble free, they’ve treated me very well and either given me loaners or paid for a not cheap Uber to work.
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Having just wrapped up a stint at a >$1B company, I was floored by the incredible amount of waste of human effort on the part of management, which never really visibly impacted the bottom or the stock price. I agree that the skill sets change as companies add zeroes to their value, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a way to determine the optimal size of a company from a productivity standpoint. Sure, it would…
Just imagine the waste in a $1T government :-)
A) the US military has dragged its feet to become audit-compliant many years after it was mandated to do so, and there’s been a lot of reporting on corruption among military leaders and defense contractors. It seems like one side only cares about government spending when it applies to social programs like Medicare. Just look at the deficit increase in the current administration. They don’t actually care about balancing the budget. It’s just a political hit when the dems are in office.
B) the government never gets credit for projects that are completed early and under budget, which does happen. Michael Lewis of Moneyball game wrote a whole book about this titled The Fifth Risk. How are we ever going to be happy with how the government uses our taxes if we don’t recognize the wins they do accomplish? All we hear about are the screwups, and we don’t hold private industry to that standard because they have a clear goal: to make profit. Turns out that trying to keep a society functioning is expensive and not sexy work. Big surprise.
C) government takes on projects essential to society that private industry is unwilling to take on, which often come with price tags that the public loves to balk at. Take the Hanford nuclear site (also featured in the Fifth Risk). The US nuclear program failed to properly dispose of nuclear waste after WWII, and it was discovered to be leaking a few years back. This waste zone threatens the water supply for millions of Americans and is costing many billions to clean up. If there’s no competition to perform this work, how do we expect it to cost any less than it does?
Government waste is constantly berated as this existential issue in our society, but government waste didn’t cause the Great Recession, nor is it driving what’s looking more like another recession here in 2019.
Sure, I have no doubt there are ways to improve the efficiency and reduce wasteful spending, and I’d love to see better financial reporting around government spending like USAfacts.org. I think technology will play a major role in informing citizens on how tax dollars are spent, but I can’t just jump on the “government is wasteful” train because I’ve been deeply unimpressed with most of the alternatives provided those people.
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Find a niche. Build a profitable business around it. Stay small. Make your customers and your staff happy (make a path to shared ownership for them if that tickles your fancy). Enjoy doing it. You won’t regret it. More money, more problems (my apologies to Mr B.I.G.)
> Find a niche. Build a profitable business around it. Stay small. Make your customers and your staff happy (make a path to shared ownership for them if that tickles your fancy). Wow. This is exactly what I'm doing!
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Phones would last much longer if you could swap the battery again
Which....you absolutely can. Maybe not by yourself, but a phone shop down the road will swap any battery in any phone for like ~£30. It's really not an issue at all. Most people just don't want to and the end of battery life usually concides with people feeling like they want something new and fresh, so it's a very convenient excuse to justify getting a new phone - while replacing the battery wouldn't be an issue in…
YMMV but I replaced the battery on my Samsung Note with two off eBay and in both cases the life was similar to the original that already had 2 years worth of wear.
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Right, that isnt a car that never breaks down though. Teslas might not be at the required reliability to day, EVs one day might be. Re price, an interesting point. Do I not repair my TV because its so reliable, or because the replacement is cheap?
Or because it's very non-repairable? I've repaired two of my old NESes, but wouldn't try my TV either. As a happy car DIYer I really appreciate when parts come in small replaceable units that I can swap out.
My 14inch CRT broke, but then I had given it to my parents because I had a flat screen. I replaced the flat screen because the hdmi was out of date, it didn't have digital, etc, etc, etc. So I'm on my third tv in 25(?) years and none of them have broken (for me). I could see a nes being different as that's attached to a library of games and aren't made anymore. I would guess if they were still being made, and there was competition, a nes would be very cheap, and not worth repairing.
You only appreciate the easily replaceable units because you have to replace them