NinjaKlaus's feed

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Goodreads was always untrustworthy, more so once Amazon took control, because they allowed reviews before a book even comes out, and don't limit those reviews to just people that get advanced copies. Also almost nobody follows the 5 star rating rules as laid out when you sign up, 5 stars doesn't mean you liked it, means you loved it and people get grumpy if you choose 3 stars for liked it and will start sending messages, it's insane.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Not that big of a deal, considering at one time The Vatican owned large chunks of the continent, it's still headquartered in Italy, most cardinals and such end up in Italy at some point. With a billion alleged members of the Church that breaks down to 1 property for every 200,000 members, it says that 14% of the property is rented at market rate and the rest at cut rate to Church employees, I'd view it very much in line with what other Churches like the United Methodist Church do, providing housing(Parsonage) for ministers. I mean the Church investment/real estate scandal is a big deal, but at the same time owning property across the planet when they have allegedly billions of people in their care, not out of the realm of probability, how many properties do other Governments own.... probably similar.

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  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Older people tend to like shows that go for years and years and years with spinoffs galore, looking at you L&O and NCIS, at least the ones I know which makes the Netflix model of 3 seasons and a cancellation a potential problem for the demographic.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Let's say the average franchise has 20-30 workers, We'll say 25, that is 8.3 workers per shift. Of those 25 I'm guessing 5-10 are part-time. So I'm going to go with 15 full and 10 part-time workers for this. Let's say the full time staff are making $10 or $400 a week. The part timers are making minimum wage, let's call it $7.50 or $150 a week. OK, so now let's go with the "living wage" of $15 an hour, that means the full time group is now making $600 a week and the part timers are making $300. We'll guess and say they need 5 full and 5 part time employees, you only get the iPhone if you stay for 6 months, which is about 26 weeks. With the living wage rate of 15 that equals out to $45,500 extra those employees would get... then since the ad doesn't say what phone, we'll go with the cheapest new iPhone the SE at 400, 400x10 is $4,000. So it's a no brainer from the business standpoint for the franchise to offer the iPhone over a higher wage. I will also point out Illinois already pays $10 as minimum wage for non-tipped people, meaning my math is off for where this is actually happening but doesn't change the fact that a business owner would rather buy iPhone's than pay more.

    I'm not saying that higher wages aren't a necessity, I'm just pointing out that franchise operators aren't always in a position to offer more. After they buy the materials and ingredients from McDonald's or McD's mandatory partner. They then have to pay McDonald's part of their yearly intake, on top of that my understanding is that McDonald's owns most of the real estate and the Franchise owner has to pay that lease too. Then you have, electricity, water, payroll, taxes, trash, etc...

    Here is what they pay to McD's, it's interesting:

    Ongoing Fees

    During the term of the franchise, you pay McDonald’s the following fees:

    Service fee: a monthly fee based upon the restaurant’s sales performance (currently a service fee of 4.0% of monthly sales).

    Rent: a monthly base rent or percentage rent that is a percentage of monthly sales.

    Mashed says that the average store brings in 2.7mm a year, but after fees, payroll, the costs of buying the food, etc it works out to the average store profit of just $150k. The initial cost to open one is $1,000,000-$2,000,000. So it's going to take 10 years just to pay off the initial investment to open a McDonald's at the 150k profit margin. So the $15 living wage has the ability to absolutely destroy that profit, especially if McDonald's Living Wage raises prices and McDonald's iPhone down the street doesn't because most people will just go to the cheaper one.

    It's a lot more complicated than just saying raise wages.

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  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Valve's so called monopoly has saved me money with the regular holiday sales, time by not needing to find a disk or hunt down a no-cd patch, and it was great not needing 50 different stores. These days I now have Bethesda, Gog, Ubisoft, EA Play, Xbox/Microsoft, Blizzard, Paradox, Social Club, Epic, and Steam stores or launchers. It's absurd and intrusive how things are now, my opinion.

    I think steam was more like Netflix than a monopoly, it was just the best most convenient place to get things when there happened to be no competition. Today this lawsuit almost has to fail because of all the other stores that are out.

    I hated Steam when it came out, I still have a slight hatred for it, but I will never like this new system of a launcher/store for every game. I miss the days of installing a game with serial codes.

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  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    the product placement is targeted at individuals, and changes depending on who is watching.

    Surprise, that smart TV was going to be used against you at some point... it's creepy but not surprising as more and more people try to avoid commercials by switching to Netflix or other streaming sites. It just sucks they are doing it.

    Also they mention TV show Modern Family trying it out but I believe How I Met Your Mother also does this on reruns.

    can do this if you are watching a film on a laptop, smartphone or smart TV, by tracking what you previously bought or looked at online.

    Even more reason to get that adblocker and block third party cookies!

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    THE Lord, THE!

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    On one hand it is a private school where you sign a code of conduct contract with them to enroll your children, especially a Catholic school where you agree to uphold and represent the morals of the Church, yeah yeah pedophilia aside, that's the agreement you sign.

    On the other hand its screwed up to punish the children because of their parents, it's even more wrong to not then expel the children of the man who found her page, because he too was violating the morals clause, as well the children of the women who sent the pictures to the principal and Bishop.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    How much does it cost in electricity to get that $7? At one time it was something like $10k usd to produce one bitcoin.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    It's the cost of shipping on a vhs tape that causes this, most buyers want priority mail shipping, or whatever we now call the 3 day shipping option. That's $8.75 for the prepaid box, not including any wrapping materials or cushioning you might use and no insurance, I think they now include delivery confirmation which most call tracking. It's the worst part of selling on eBay or amazon, the shipping charges are insane before you ever get to the charges eBay hits you with, they even charge you a percentage on the shipping fee.

    You can do cheaper shipping with media mail which starts at $3 but you then need to buy a box and packing materials which quickly brings it back up to about $7-$8 if you aren't buying in bulk at which point you almost just give up and go with the prepaid priority mail box.

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  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    You know the answer, money. They intend to sell this thing at some point. Especially if it requires a yearly booster like the flu shot, and they surely don't want any cheaper varieties on the market than needed.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    So... here you have that fun slippery slope of a private company doesn't have to follow the first amendment... I'm all for net neutrality and find all of this just stupid, but I am torn on this, we have gone through months of news programs now reminding us that private companies don't have to allow free speech because it only applies to the government. Wouldn't it be easier to let the free market dictate this, oh wait, most places there is little to no competition in that market.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Hey guys, using your phone and driving is now a crime, don't take your eyes off the road!!! Oh hey, how about you enjoy this new giant touchscreen that will replace your radio, cooling system and dashboard, no dangers here.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    I am also concerned with the lack of charging stations and the amount of time the cars take to charge. In the city it's not a problem, but some of us travel and there just aren't enough stations to go from Charlotte to Atlanta and back.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Does more, cost less. It's that simple... or not...

    Seriously, I liked the Apple devices in school and always wanted one, but never enough to justify a switch from Windows laptops that are cheaper. When I got tired of Windows I dabbled in Linux, now I dual boot. If I had the money I'd hackintosh a new computer just to do it.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Microsoft sent out emails today about getting refunds for people that are having problems, they probably don't want to pull it because it seems to be working well with the Series X.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    They should exempt them from or give them a discount on the recycling program if they are willing to actually support their devices for a longer amount of time. I'm not saying you need to update the ios version for 10 years, but maybe patch for security flaws so finance apps and others that require up to date security will stick around keeping devices out of landfills, I have an iPhone 5c sitting in a drawer that still turns on, can make calls and receive texts, but it's no longer updated so apps have moved on because it's on too old of software so I had to move on. They could also maybe offer more than a dollar of trade in value on these things, it's not worth the time to mail my old device back if they are only giving me 10 bucks for it.

  • 3 years ago
    Comment NinjaKlaus

    Still, these on-demand streaming services aren’t as bad as cable. You pay $15 to $60 a month and you aren’t stuck with any contracts. You can cancel your subscriptions whenever you want (or rotate them to save money), and best of all, you don’t have to deal with the cable company.

    So much this on rotating them out, if you are willing to wait a month or two and binge an entire show from Hulu or CBS/Paramount+ or HBO Max then it's worth it to still do on demand streaming services.

    The problem comes when you subscribe to services like YouTube TV, Sling, or Hulu with Live TV, which are direct replacements for cable. Like other streaming services, these live TV platforms are steadily losing content and increasing in price, to the point that they often cost more than a cable plan.

    It's obvious that they used the drug dealer model with these services at the start with networks giving these channels to the services dirt cheap with the idea to test the waters of this seemingly niche idea. Now, it's not so niche and the channel providers want their cake back now that it's on a different plate.

    If you aren't a "reality" TV person or a sports person there is little reason to have any form of "live" TV at this point because within a year most stuff comes to streaming. You can watch CBS News on YouTube/or their app for free, if you don't want CBS you can choose from several options on Pluto TV free, you can watch your local news usually through their websites or smart apps, you can also potentially use locast, but that's shaky as they are being sued and could disappear, and they also only cover select locations.

    Your average cable provider, on the other hand, offers a 120-channel plan (with Fox Sports) for around $60 to $70 a month. Bundling that cable plan with 100 Mbps internet service pushes your monthly bill somewhere between $75 and $90 a month, which is still a better deal than streaming TV because it includes your internet. (Note: Some service providers may not offer bundles at this price, especially if you’re in a rural area.)

    I'm in a major city suburb and can't get prices that low, we need to pay close to $150 for that package and that's before the taxes, hidden fees and mandatory gateway rentals.

    The only streaming TV service with a better price than cable is Sling TV, which starts at just $30 a month. Sling is a fantastic alternative to basic cable or a “starter” cable plan, but its limited channel selection won’t jive with people who prefer larger packages.

    Sling is great, if you can live without Fox Regional Sports owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, for around $60 you can get every channel they offer in English, I think it's around 80 for English and a handful of Spanish channels, but... we had a major problem with Sling, after we left a few months later somebody, I think Sling itself, reactivated the account, we called and they said tough, no refunds, and said somebody must have done it. I went through disabled the account, made sure to clear the passwords and cookies from the browser, deleted all the apps and it was fine, for a while. Then about a year later they did it again and refused to even talk to us, telling us this is not a problem on their end but ours, so we called the bank and the lady in the charge back department said this is not the first problem they've had with Sling and that it's happened to others and that the only option was to block Dish from doing business with our accoun...

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