It happened to me when I bought a new motherboard from Amazon (shipped and sold by Amazon, not Amazon Warehouse nor fulfilled by Amazon). I opened the motherboard box and inside was a 10-year old motherboard.
I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.
The way Amazon runs things is completely inexcusable. If you can't order directly from Amazon and get a non-fraudulent product, then the whole platform is basically going to a flea market, having all the vendors turn their backs, shuffling product amongst the vendors, and sending normal citizens through to buy what they want.
Any traceability and trust the end consumer would have is gone. Amazon may be able to trace a particular product to a vendor, but that's of no help to a consumer wanting a consistent supply of goods. Amazon also doesn't show if a vendor chooses to opt out of comingled inventory, which would go a long way towards helping end consumer trust.
A year ago I bought a TV (same as you: directly from Amazon). It came with the screen cracked. I asked for a new one... The replacement came cracked. On the reviews, I saw a couple people mentioning that the screen came cracked. They wanted me to send them back by Canada Post, but I said no way I would do that, as I don't drive, and I would not carry 2 55" TVs on the streets. They ended up paying for purolator to pick them up at my place.
I asked for a refund and bought on Best Buy. No problems!
> The petrodollar hypothesis is a myth. The United States, now a net oil exporter, does not depend on Saudi oil.
The notion that the United States does not depend on Saudi oil (or that it's energy independent) just because it's a net oil exporter is a myth. Not all crude oil is equal. The US has an abundance of light oil which it exports but it still imports a lot of heavy and sour oil from OPEC and Canada.[1]
> The notion that the United States does not depend on Saudi oil (or that it's energy independent) just because it's a net oil exporter is a myth
One, this has nothing to do with the petrodollar hypothesis. The U.S. dollar is fine with or without the Saudis dollar denominating their oil. If anything, the causation goes the other way. The large American consumer base generates dollar supply, which creates dollar-investment demand, which leads to economies of scale across the dollar financial system.
Two, yes--switching from Saudi crude would be painful. But within the scope of foreign policy, it's not unprecedented. Moreover, switching the Saudi military and financial system off American support would likely cost the House of Saud its country. Long story short, NOPEC is a low-probability bill. The KSA should have ignored it instead of levying empty threats.
So you're saying that the reason that the United States dollar is dominant and the US is able to consume vastly more resources than any other country is not because it uses its much larger military to dominate territorial, resource, and strategic control of the globe? Instead, the reason the United States dollar is so strong is just because Americans consume so much??
Wow! This is amazing. It changes my entire worldview! All a country needs to do to boost its currency and economy is to start consuming more! I wonder why more countries don't try that? Maybe they are just not ambitious enough. Hmm.
> not because it uses its much larger military to dominate territorial, resource, and strategic control of the globe?
The U.S. dollar was in global use preceding WWII. Going back to 1915, the Federal Reserve was pioneering electronic money transmission [1]. After World War II, the United States being the only developed country not bombed to the Stone Age helped it set the terms of the peace. But the Bretton Woods system catalysed an existing trend; it did not create it.
> All a country needs to do to boost its currency and economy is to start consuming more!
Yup. This was a foundational motivation for the creation of the Eurozone. It's also why we're seeing offshore renminbi financial markets. If you sell to a consumer in Europe or China, you'll tend to end up with Euros and renminbi. You can swap it into your own currency and lose the spread. Or you can invest it in assets in that currency. The latter drives down capital costs, which makes those currencies more attractive for fundraising. That, in turn, creates financial centers. As long as one has relative price stability, it's a relatively-difficult feedback loop to screw up.
TL; DR The petrodollar hypothesis has bad predictive value.
I believe there is a physical limit to how far you can stretch that because it takes actual resources to make things for people to consume. We only have a certain amount of oil supply and reserves, minerals, etc. Which is why its not feasible for every country to just consume as much as they want, because some percentage of the money is tied to real things in a finite world.
Countries with more resource control may be able to take that concept pretty far. But it doesn't come from them just deciding they want more stuff.
> it takes actual resources to make things for people to consume
Value is subjective. Energy intensity of global GDP has been falling for decades [1]. Where I've seen estimates, it looks like material intensity has been doing the same.
Broadly speaking, most countries won't have a reserve currency. Neither their demographics nor economy can support it. But some countries punch above their weight. Canada, Switzerland and Japan have outsized influence for (a) being trading economies with lots of buying power (i.e. lots of overseas vendors end up with their currency) with (b) limited or no history of currency controls (i.e. people aren't in a rush to swap out of the currency, for fear of it getting trapped), and (c) stable governments and central banks.
Given (b) requires free capital flow, which through the impossible trinity [2] means giving up a fixed exchange rate or monetary sovereignty, reserve currencies aren't something most countries may even want. Using dollars tends to be fine. Having alternatives in Europe and China is probably for the best, for everyone, in the long run.
The energy/material intensity of global GDP has probably been falling because most of the GDP actually is generated by way of massive unaccounted debt piling up.
> energy/material intensity of global GDP has probably been falling because most of the GDP actually is generated by way of massive unaccounted debt piling up
Real energy intensity is falling. This is because of both increasing efficiency and [1] a greater fraction of demand being explained by immaterial factors [2].
In any case, leveraging an economy doesn't directly change its energy intensity. If it costs X kcal to produce $1 of goods, it doesn't matter if those goods were paid for with cash or credit.
The U.S. was able to consume vastly more resources than any other country well before we have a much larger military, so that can't be the explanation.
The US was left eseentially undamaged by WW2, its industrial base was vastly enhanced. While Europe and USSR had to rebuild, the US was able to build from that enhanced base.
The Marshall plan provided a mechanism for the US to fund European rebuilding, which caused Europe to purchase industrial goods and machinery from the US, using those very same funds. The end result was a win-win through to the early 1970s.
At the same time, the USSR was rebuilding from an even more destroyed economy than Europe and could only leverage its domination of Eastern Europe. China was occupied with its own political upheavals and Japan was in the same state as Europe.
The post war "military industrial complex" warned about by Eisenhower, is a real thing. The US has a large military because the large military is a way to recycle taxation to defence employment. The US doesn't need a military that costs $750b per annum and is larger than the next 10 nations combined. However, US employment requires that military to keep the balls in the air. It provides industrial employment to people in places where it isn't financially prudent and the military itself provides employment for those that can't get employment in the general economy.
In essence, the US military is a giant social security network for the US. It consumes vast resources to do so and could be done at much lower cost, but the likelihood of that occurring is zero due to the vested interests.
Although not strictly a Raspberry Pi project, I have a couple C.H.I.P. boards[1] scattered throughout my apartment collecting temperature and humidity readings (using a HIH8120 sensor[2]) and feeding it to my Raspberry Pi which runs InfluxDB and Chronograf[3] to store and display a simple dashboard. The end result looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/cIrhSUq.png
This is really cool! I've been thinking about a similar idea lately and this seems like a great way of doing it. Do you by chance have any material on how you got the honeywell sensor working with the C.H.I.P. board? (This would be my first electronics project)
This was my first electronics project as well and I chose the Honeywell sensor because it has decent humidity accuracy (which is what I was mostly interested in) and a bonus temperature sensor built in. It uses the I2C protocol for communication which I found pleasant to work with although it would probably be simpler to just use am analog voltage sensor.
I love the C.H.I.P board, seems like they'd have better market penetration if their name wasn't "CHIP" though. I feel like the Particle IOT line has suffered a similarly hindrence?
> Why not just run InfluxDB and Chronograf on one of the CHIPs?
I started off with a single C.H.I.P. and ran everything on it but then when I added a second C.H.I.P. I wanted to have all the data in a central location. I also found Chronograf lag a lot when trying to browse more than a couple day's worth of data. The Raspberry Pi has much faster storage and CPU.
> How are you sending data to the Pi?
The C.H.I.P. has a Python script that runs on a cron that calls a C program to read the sensor and then sends it to the Pi using InfluxDB's HTTP API.
I'm the same, I use some cheap ESP8266 devices which have a temperature/humidity sensor attached. They submit their measurements every minute to a central MQ installation:
While I don't have any particular reason for collecting the data it can be fun to look at. For example you can easily spot when somebody has a shower because the humidity spikes in the bathroom:
Naively I expected to track the weather, because I figure on a hot day the temperature of my living-room/etc would spike. Turns out this house is pretty well insulated so the internal temperature has essentially no relationship to the external one. I guess that makes sense in a country where you might have -25'C in the winters.
Nothing in particular. I just wanted a way to view the temperature and humidity in my apartment when I'm out. Also I wanted to know what affects the humidity in my apartment and by how much (for example, you can see when I take my morning shower). In the future I may use the data to control a humidifier to turn it on whenever the humidity drops below a certain level.
I use a paid generator: https://termsfeed.com/. It asks you a few questions about how you will be using the data and generates the text based on your answers.
I like how the people behind the podcasts, the hosts and frequent guests are catalogued. It's an interesting way to browse for episodes and podcasts that I haven't seen done anywhere else.
Shameless plug: I've been working on a similar project (https://podcast.party/) that also lets you subscribe to podcasts to keep track of which episodes you have played/unplayed.
Just spent a few minutes playing around with your site. Very nice. I really like how your discovery lists show the last time the podcast was updated, the number of episodes, and the average length. Filtering on those attributes would be an awesome feature.
It's a cloud-based podcast aggregator with a focus on discovery and social aspects (e.g. seeing what your friends are listening to, commenting on podcast episodes, sharing clips, etc.).
Remember: it's the price-to-earnings ratio and not price-to-revenue ratio.
Amazon's stock trades at a P/E of 910 exactly because it's deferring profit to continue growing its revenue. At some point it's going to stop investing its revenue into growth and start realizing a profit on that revenue. At that point the P/E will come down.
I knew this was a possibility when buying from Amazon Warehouse but didn't expect it when buying new directly from Amazon.