271–280 of 508 posts
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Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?
No. The 15 largest cargo ships produce more pollution than all the cars in the world combined. http://www.industrytap.com/worlds-15-biggest-ships-create-mo...
> This is great news for U.S. sellers, especially eBay sellers. Exactly the intended consequence. Why should US taxpayers subsidize shipping costs for products to come from China? It made no sense at all in today's economy unless the only thing you care about is paying less for your goods regardless of the consequences, which I don't think is a majority position of adults today.
The actual consequence will be Chinese sellers using US warehouses and drop-shipping from there. Others send over a container with each ordered good and slap a local post’s label on it. Possibly that local post’s label is attached in China and the container just gets dropped off at a USPS DC by the private freight forwarder. It’s already fairly common. Overall, a few more US jobs, and maybe more USPS revenue for what…
I'm wondering how this is going to effect the hobbyist and small business electronics markets here in the United States? Know how cheap and easy it is to get a small number PCBs made in China and shipped to the US? That's over. So is any number of small electronic parts that would've been shipped free or cheaply from China. Cheap ESP8266 boards? Nope. Cheap automotive relays? Nope. Basically any and every kind of pie…
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Of course this is bad for eBay, and perhaps etsy, shopify and others. The flood of direct-from-China sellers selling cheap products and shipping for free (on USPS's dime) will stop.
Definitely bad for eBay and etsy. They're absolutely dependent on the flood of cheap goods. Honestly this is disastrous for etsy, but maybe it'll help them get back to their roots and be useful again.
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Yes, but try codifying that and you won’t get far enough to make that comparison. E.g. mentally or on a computer, ‘Date.Parse(“2019-09-31”)’ is an error ;)
Any properly defined software should take a date that doesn't exist and move it forward or backward to a date that does. Leap years would crash every computer every February if that wasn't taken into account.
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Aren't ocean vessels one of the most efficient forms of transportation in existence?
In terms of dollars per unit weight moved, yes. They are not only moving massive amounts of cargo with low drag, they're also relatively lightweight compared to the product being moved. Also, there's no maintenance cost to keeping a flat path across the Pacific like there is in keeping roads free of potholes. In terms of environmental damage, not at all. Container ships burn some of the nastiest, most sulphrous and d…
What would be the concession from the Chinese? Or do they up the ante and impose more tariffs on incoming U.S. goods? Is this something that the Hacker News community actually supports Trump on? More curious than anything - you just don't see a lot of support for any of his initiatives here. ? Why all the downvotes?
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Yes, but try codifying that and you won’t get far enough to make that comparison. E.g. mentally or on a computer, ‘Date.Parse(“2019-09-31”)’ is an error ;)
Any properly defined software should take a date that doesn't exist and move it forward or backward to a date that does. Leap years would crash every computer every February if that wasn't taken into account.
This actually sounds like a good thing. It costs Chinese shippers almost nothing to send stuff directly from China, while it costs me quite a lot to send stuff within the US, largely because I'm subsidizing all the Chinese shippers. Moreover, for me to send any parcel (even very small ones, like 2 oz.) outside the US costs a small fortune these days, again because I'm subsidizing the Chinese shippers.
Edit: no affiliation, I just use them for my business and they’ve been great.
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> If fiscal responsibility were the goal, they'd have required the other federal agencies to do the same That's not how the Federal government works. It's a LARGE organization that sometimes have people with philosophies align. There is no chance that the military would prefund pensions. I think that, toward the initiative to make the USPS free of subsidy now and in the future, it made perfect sense. The USPS workers…
OK, let's reword that a bit. Why didn't the same Congressional Republicans who pushed through the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 push for similar changes to how other federal agencies fund their pensions? Why won't the military pre-fund pensions? Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?
I don't know. Probably something to do with the majority of the US population liking the USPS but not everyone wanting more military spending.
> Why shouldn't they do the same "fiscally responsible" thing for veterans benefits?
Probably because congress would never approve another 20%+ on top of the current military spending and still get all their pork in. These topics are an amalgam of political decisions as well as leadership decisions.
I vote for more accountability, reliability and term limits in government. That's rarely a topic from either major party.