Governments around the world disagree. I get to pay a continuous stream of taxes on anything major that I own. My current real estate taxes equal about 7 of what my mortgage payments use to be. It feels like I'll always be paying rent on my own house.
For the PC Monitor issue:
To prevent this sort of behavior.
Open Group Policy Editor
Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>System>Device Installation
Prevent automatic downloads of applications associated with device metadata = Set to Enable.
To get rid of it once installed you have to remove it from the Windows Store since it's an app, not an installed program. For me, this was not possible as there was no way presented to uninstall it in the app store. I had to do it from terminal with this command, which could vary a bit depending on the exact app version:
I live alone and don't eat out. I spend about $30-$40 a week on groceries. These restaurants can all burn to the ground. It's just overpriced slop. I make better food for less money and don't care about the "social experience" they seem to bank on. We all need to find other ways than stuffing greasy garbage into our face holes to have a social interaction.
That's the problem we have locally. No one wants these things, but local government keeps trying to push them through anyway because all they see is tax dollars.
I agree that the best way to do this would be a tax rebate. It's a convoluted chain of credits to pass the refund back down the line the same way it was charged with no guarantee it will ever make it to the consumer in any meaningful way. Let the government be liable instead of forcing every company in the chain to take on liability. The consumer and small business will always be the loser in the chain while the lawyers get richer.
Like most of these cases it'll have to be done as a class action lawsuit at this scale. That means the consumer is going to get a check for a dollar and the lawyers are going to get rich. The consumer never wins.
My suppliers show a tariff surcharge on my invoices. I charge a tariff surcharge on my products so the consumer knows where that cost comes from and also knows that I can remove that charge from the quote if the tariffs get pulled back before they sign a contract. Note that a surcharge is not a tariff. It just indicated the cause for the increased price. Sure the consumer paid the cost in the end, but so did the retailer, the distributor and the importer. Unless a refund trickles down from the importer, who is the only party that actually paid a tariff, which is never going to happen, then no one is getting their money back once it's been spent. You can sue all you want and pretend it's setting a precedent, but you are really just wasting time and resources because you don't understand the supply change and who is actually liable. Hell, even the importer has to sue the government to get that tariff money back before they would even remotely be liable to pass it down the chain. More than likely they'll just pocket the money if the government voluntarily gives it back (unlikely) because passing it down the chain would be a logistical nightmare. I guess the real answer here is that every company that tried to be transparent about the tariff costs should have just lumped it into the cost of goods so it was invisible to the consumer. You can't sue for something you can't prove is there. Punish the honest parties while the people that profited get to keep the money anyway.
This doesn't make sense to me at all. First of all the only party paying an actual tariff is the party that imports the goods. Is that Amazon? For a lot of things, I'm sure it is. For other things, Amazon is just paying a higher price for the goods due to tariffs, but they are not the one paying the tariffs and thus could not be the one to refund them. I work with a lot of different companies to source materials and none of them are refunding any tariffs. What makes Amazon different? Also, last I heard the tariffs were deemed illegal, but that ruling is under appeal so nothing has really changed at this point. Also keep in mind that only the latest round of tariffs is in question. There were tariffs that went into effect in Trump's first term and were upheld during the Biden era. Those aren't going anywhere. I'm not a big fan of Amazon, but I don't see where this lawsuit has any teeth since every other company out there is handling things the same way.
Thankfully I have gas heat and so far the weather has been pretty cool for the current time of year so my AC hasn't had to run at all. I hope we have a mild summer. I've seen some of the insane electric bills around here lately and how much of them is actual usage vs all the fees. Usage doesn't count for much these days.
I'm from VA, which has more data centers in the state than any other in the country. They want to push even more into place and our local and state government seems to be all for it. All it's doing is costing us money so AI companies can cash in on all the people that want to make stupid memes. The modern world sucks.
The US government already uses a clearing house service, id.me, for it's own verification systems. Why is this not used for this purpose as well instead of forcing the site owners to collect and protect that data? It's stupid and unnecessary. There is literally already a system in place that they aren't even considering using.
Costco's contracts and policies are written to protect Costco first, the customer second, and to screw the vendor if any problems arise. They require we sell a specific brand of problem that has many quality issues and expect me to go fix all the problems for free because that's how the contract is written. They make a lot of promises to the customer on my behalf. I absolutely expect them to provide support when there are product quality issues and an unhappy customer because of it. That is literally Costco's only contribution to this system and they consistently fail at it by choice. They ignore all problems, expecting the vendor to deal with it out of fear of losing their Costco contract. I hate working for minimal profit margin for this company, but the ownership here has fallen into the trap of letting Costco become their big lead generator. As long as I keep get paid to go fix things instead of actually making money, it's not my problem. It's just frustrating watching the big corps screw the little guy and then watching the little guy take it like that's normal.
I'm a vendor for Costco. Don't let another big corporation fool you. They just dump all the problems on their suppliers and vendors while staying as hands off as possible. It's just another mega corporation that has done a better job on its public image than other similar companies. I have to pay a ton of tariffs on the brand of product I'm required to sell by Costco. This lawsuit isn't targeting those tariffs at all. Just the stuff Costco sells of the shelf. The vendors never get any support from Costco.
I'm stuck with Windows for the same reasons. I do use Linux on my laptop though and would not be opposed to switching my office machine to it as well if I can get the company I work for to make a few key software changes. I've had older generations of my family running Linux Mint for nearly a decade. They don't know the difference because it's all they've ever used. I have less phone calls about problem from these people than any Windows users I've had to deal with.
I work in construction and pickup trucks definitely have their place. This however is not a usable truck . It's a medical treatment for small dick syndrome.
I use mine to clear grass from the driveways (my neighbors more than mine since I don't care that much) and to blow leaves out of my gutters. As for blowing an entire yard full of leaves into neat little piles, hell no!. I've got better things to do with my time. I just keep mulching blades on my mower and grind the leaves up. Better for the lawn anyway.
Governments around the world disagree. I get to pay a continuous stream of taxes on anything major that I own. My current real estate taxes equal about 7 of what my mortgage payments use to be. It feels like I'll always be paying rent on my own house.
For the PC Monitor issue: To prevent this sort of behavior. Open Group Policy Editor Computer Configuration>Administrative Templates>System>Device Installation Prevent automatic downloads of applications associated with device metadata = Set to Enable.
To get rid of it once installed you have to remove it from the Windows Store since it's an app, not an installed program. For me, this was not possible as there was no way presented to uninstall it in the app store. I had to do it from terminal with this command, which could vary a bit depending on the exact app version:
Remove-AppxPackage LGElectronics.LGMonitorApp_1.2606.1601.0_x86__cfnzzhwkr8z5w
I live alone and don't eat out. I spend about $30-$40 a week on groceries. These restaurants can all burn to the ground. It's just overpriced slop. I make better food for less money and don't care about the "social experience" they seem to bank on. We all need to find other ways than stuffing greasy garbage into our face holes to have a social interaction.
That's the problem we have locally. No one wants these things, but local government keeps trying to push them through anyway because all they see is tax dollars.
I agree that the best way to do this would be a tax rebate. It's a convoluted chain of credits to pass the refund back down the line the same way it was charged with no guarantee it will ever make it to the consumer in any meaningful way. Let the government be liable instead of forcing every company in the chain to take on liability. The consumer and small business will always be the loser in the chain while the lawyers get richer.
Like most of these cases it'll have to be done as a class action lawsuit at this scale. That means the consumer is going to get a check for a dollar and the lawyers are going to get rich. The consumer never wins.
My suppliers show a tariff surcharge on my invoices. I charge a tariff surcharge on my products so the consumer knows where that cost comes from and also knows that I can remove that charge from the quote if the tariffs get pulled back before they sign a contract. Note that a surcharge is not a tariff. It just indicated the cause for the increased price. Sure the consumer paid the cost in the end, but so did the retailer, the distributor and the importer. Unless a refund trickles down from the importer, who is the only party that actually paid a tariff, which is never going to happen, then no one is getting their money back once it's been spent. You can sue all you want and pretend it's setting a precedent, but you are really just wasting time and resources because you don't understand the supply change and who is actually liable. Hell, even the importer has to sue the government to get that tariff money back before they would even remotely be liable to pass it down the chain. More than likely they'll just pocket the money if the government voluntarily gives it back (unlikely) because passing it down the chain would be a logistical nightmare. I guess the real answer here is that every company that tried to be transparent about the tariff costs should have just lumped it into the cost of goods so it was invisible to the consumer. You can't sue for something you can't prove is there. Punish the honest parties while the people that profited get to keep the money anyway.
This doesn't make sense to me at all. First of all the only party paying an actual tariff is the party that imports the goods. Is that Amazon? For a lot of things, I'm sure it is. For other things, Amazon is just paying a higher price for the goods due to tariffs, but they are not the one paying the tariffs and thus could not be the one to refund them. I work with a lot of different companies to source materials and none of them are refunding any tariffs. What makes Amazon different? Also, last I heard the tariffs were deemed illegal, but that ruling is under appeal so nothing has really changed at this point. Also keep in mind that only the latest round of tariffs is in question. There were tariffs that went into effect in Trump's first term and were upheld during the Biden era. Those aren't going anywhere. I'm not a big fan of Amazon, but I don't see where this lawsuit has any teeth since every other company out there is handling things the same way.
Thankfully I have gas heat and so far the weather has been pretty cool for the current time of year so my AC hasn't had to run at all. I hope we have a mild summer. I've seen some of the insane electric bills around here lately and how much of them is actual usage vs all the fees. Usage doesn't count for much these days.
I'm from VA, which has more data centers in the state than any other in the country. They want to push even more into place and our local and state government seems to be all for it. All it's doing is costing us money so AI companies can cash in on all the people that want to make stupid memes. The modern world sucks.
The US government already uses a clearing house service, id.me, for it's own verification systems. Why is this not used for this purpose as well instead of forcing the site owners to collect and protect that data? It's stupid and unnecessary. There is literally already a system in place that they aren't even considering using.
Costco is the middleman in this situation so I agree completely.
Costco's contracts and policies are written to protect Costco first, the customer second, and to screw the vendor if any problems arise. They require we sell a specific brand of problem that has many quality issues and expect me to go fix all the problems for free because that's how the contract is written. They make a lot of promises to the customer on my behalf. I absolutely expect them to provide support when there are product quality issues and an unhappy customer because of it. That is literally Costco's only contribution to this system and they consistently fail at it by choice. They ignore all problems, expecting the vendor to deal with it out of fear of losing their Costco contract. I hate working for minimal profit margin for this company, but the ownership here has fallen into the trap of letting Costco become their big lead generator. As long as I keep get paid to go fix things instead of actually making money, it's not my problem. It's just frustrating watching the big corps screw the little guy and then watching the little guy take it like that's normal.
No I don't. I'm just pointing out that Costco's only concern is Costco.
I'm a vendor for Costco. Don't let another big corporation fool you. They just dump all the problems on their suppliers and vendors while staying as hands off as possible. It's just another mega corporation that has done a better job on its public image than other similar companies. I have to pay a ton of tariffs on the brand of product I'm required to sell by Costco. This lawsuit isn't targeting those tariffs at all. Just the stuff Costco sells of the shelf. The vendors never get any support from Costco.
I'm stuck with Windows for the same reasons. I do use Linux on my laptop though and would not be opposed to switching my office machine to it as well if I can get the company I work for to make a few key software changes. I've had older generations of my family running Linux Mint for nearly a decade. They don't know the difference because it's all they've ever used. I have less phone calls about problem from these people than any Windows users I've had to deal with.
I work in construction and pickup trucks definitely have their place. This however is not a usable truck . It's a medical treatment for small dick syndrome.
I use mine to clear grass from the driveways (my neighbors more than mine since I don't care that much) and to blow leaves out of my gutters. As for blowing an entire yard full of leaves into neat little piles, hell no!. I've got better things to do with my time. I just keep mulching blades on my mower and grind the leaves up. Better for the lawn anyway.