I live in an Eastern European country, and I see more BMWs here than my home country (UK). It's not that they are more reliable than other cars (I'd say the opposite infact), but having a BMW (even a 15 year old one that's starting to rust...) gives you status.
Let's take that and ask: this status that having a beemer gives you, do other people care? Or is it status in the owner's eyes?
From another direction, how would an average citizen C of your country size up another person D who's bought BMW? Would C actually think significantly better of D?
I went to a school where there was a large mix of wealth, some kids were extremely well off, multi-millionaire parents, and bought new (expensive and high quality) clothes. Quite a few others bought from charity shops (often of necessity like me). Not once in the years I was there did I ever hear any reference to clothes, or any measure of a person related to their clothing. It was all down to the person you were and I don't imagine our school was any special in that.
It's both. Again, from my own perspective - I know some friends groups where someone saying "dude, Mark has a beemer! And it's a 320d!!!" Means that Mark is now as popular as a highschool cheerleader girl. He will be invited to more parties, to different employment opportunities(even if those opportunities to me and you would be probably a bit "sketchy"), it just makes you popular, and popular people often(but not always) have it easier in life. Again in the same group of people, if Mark wants to do "business" of some kind, people will automatically respect him more and care about his opinion, because clearly, a man with a BMW, an iPhone(fake, but no one knows), golden chain and signet(also fake), must be at least moderately successful - how else would be come to own these things if he wasn't?
And no, I'm not being sarcastic, this is literally how people think.
And also, I think a form of this also exists in the West - I've heard many times that if you drive say, a Ferrari, people will approach you and literally ask "hey, you're successful - how can I get to where you are?". Sure some will be hateful, but some will be genuinely intrigued how you came into possession of this wealth and how can they replicate it.for themselves - they respect you despite knowing absolutely nothing about you, purely because you drive a fancy car. Again, not universal, but I know it happens. Same principle applies to that fake iPhone.
The reason why they are stored are because hotels need a way to 'guarantee' the booking. This means if you don't turn up they can still charge you for (e.g.) the first night of your trip. A pre-authorization wouldn't work as these typically only last for 30 days, and as I understand can still be declined in some cases. I assume hotels would prefer to use their own credit card terminal, vs Booking.com et al as they get better rates, so even charging for the first night wouldn't be great. I'm not saying this is right, but there are good reasons behind it.
Unless you are a credit card ISSUER, there are no good reasons for storing CVV numbers and it’s actually PCI non-compliant. Do not do this, the fine is high and per CVV stored. Don’t even store these in logs.
Disclaimer: I work for one of the biggest OTA's in the world, precisely in the accommodation area.
You are describing what could be a reason to keep those CC details but definitely there are other ways to do it, including delegating vaults to third parties.
This is a major fuck-up and there's no way to sugar coat it, I'm afraid.
There might be reasonable issues but still it does not look compliant with credit-card processing rules to me. I hope they have some exception in their contracts or someone upstream is going to put them out of business with lawsuits and bans.
100 amps at what voltage? At 220v that's only 22kW which is nothing. This year my city has installed 350kW EV chargers in the old town without digging up the street (other than under where they install it), so the infrastructure must have already been there. I assume in an industrial area it would not at all be an issue.
Yeah I meant 100kW, but you’re right that even much higher power versions don’t require much retrofitting. A company I worked for had to install power to support 5MW of equipment where there was previously only a few houses nearby and the cost to do so was under $1M which was something like 2% of the total project cost. Incremental upgrades are extremely reasonable from a “capex / useful life” perspective.
Yeah, that's because the various national railway systems are poorly suited for international traffic. There are various EU efforts to improve the situation, but the governments try to protect their national monopolies etc. The end result being that in most cases it's easier to ship international freight by truck.
Yes this exactly. My friend has a professional printer like you'd find in printing shops, and when he is on holiday I go to his house every few days to run a test print to make sure the head doesn't dry up. If it does, the only real option is to pay a few hundred Euro for a new one.
As a US citizen it's somewhat tricky as you are taxed on your worldwide income, but the easiest way is probably to become a tax resident in a country with a low tax rate. Even in the UK, as a contractor/freelancer it's fairly simple to pay single digit percent effective taxes on incomes of £100k+. And that's without even delving into what could be considered a 'tax avoidance' scheme.
Not shure single digit effective is possible nowadays even outside IR35 - and HMRC has unliterally ruled that some professions are in side IR35 eg all it/developer contractors.
Actors, film / tv professionals and lawyers etc are for the large part still treated as "self employed"
eBay has a lot of different use cases. Although it was originally for selling your second hand junk, now I expect a lot of their sales come from new items.
In my country eBay doesn't exist (i.e. they don't have a localised site, you can sell on other country sites though). The main 'second hand junk' services are:
- a local version of Craisglist
- Facebook Groups (for hyper local listings, mainly for very cheap or free stuff, e.g. "I'm moving tomorrow, come get my half destroyed IKEA furniture")
- Vinted [0] - although it's intended for second hand clothes, a lot of people sell new items they bought in sales from other countries, so it's more like eBay in this retrospect
For new items Etsy (crafts and furniture) is quite popular.
For electronics Tindie (although it's custom / DIY, rather than 'random adapter that only 5 other people worldwide have bought this month'). Most of the time when I want some sort of electronics that I can't find elsewhere I will buy from eBay in another country (using a shipping service) or AliExpress (then wait 2 months).
However US pricing is normally exclusive of tax whereas the U.K. price is inclusive of 20% VAT. 54*1.2 is around £65 so not that far off the £67 price.
I did not know that. So when ordering stuff in the US, the tax is added at the checkout stage? Is it because of state tax laws being different or something?
I guess that's part of it, although in this day and age it's trivial to equip each branch with a laser printer and program which adds the local sales tax.
However, there's a simpler reason: for psychological reasons no retailer is going to voluntarily put higher prices on their shelves than they have to, and since unlike most other countries there is no consumer protection law requiring the the actual checkout price including sales tax to be displayed, they don't.
