Oh. The ones I’m referring to are the modern Amazon lockers & such, reliant on modern technology. Courier goes up, enters auth code. It then asks you to scan a pkg. Then there’s the prompt, is the pkg: SMALL, MEDIUM, LARGE, X-LARGE? Upon selection, it pops open a corresponding door. One pkg per locker. Rinse & repeat until all pkgs delivered to lockers, and recipients are notified of delivery.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s actually super slick & helpful for everyone.

Kind of related but not as high-tech or secure, some nice apartment complexes are being built with sizeable delivery rooms. Which works unless you’ve got a klepto in your complex.

With varying degrees of success, you can create accounts with the delivery companies & specify what you want done with your pkg. Deliver to any address you like, or hold at facility or an access point. This is your best option, to dig a little deeper, take some time & really take control of how you want your deliveries. As best you can. 🙂

With most US residential pkgs, it is left because it’s easy & economical. A third to half of the time, it’s cheap bullshit. Theft or loss is often not a big enough problem to warrant not delivering the first time.

Calling every person that doesnt receive their pkg in person is patently ridiculous. Full-time drivers have anywhere from 130 stops to 300+ stops. Let’s say 2/3 don’t accept the pkg in person (it’s more than 2/3); that is 86-200+ phone calls or 86-200+ stops’ worth of pkgs, per driver, to be recycled back through facility.

The first time most residential pkgs are attempted delivery, the shipping company makes like 5-10¢ on that pkg. Say it goes back to facility, to be delivered tomorrow, as you said. That very low value pkg, to be recycled back into the system & taking up space, to be processed & put on a truck for delivery the next day, to be delivered for basically no profit/breakeven. Awesome 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻. Let’s say 2nd attempt is unsuccessful, and we can’t just leave the package on the doorstep when the person isn’t home because that’s such an obviously stupid thing to do. Driver starts swearing, sticks another notice on the door, 5+ people handle the pkg again…you know the deal…and the 3rd day it is delivered at a loss or, if failed, is held at facility for customer pickup. The company has lost money, and on some cheap foreign-made t-shirts from Kohl’s, no less.

In short: they’re doing the best they can, every single day, by the numbers. 🙂 Looking at the big picture, it works pretty well! Except for Amazon, they suck, but everybody keeps giving them money so basically they can fail up forever until that changes.

Hope this sheds some light on how logistics work behind the scenes. Leave some snacks, drinks out for your delivery drivers! The real-life Santas!

This is a relatively new technology; we have this in the states as well. As the systems get cheaper, more intuitive, more well-understood, they’re rolling out to more places. I’ve seen one in a very small town, and there’s a number of them outside of middle-high class apartment complexes.

Nice username. 😏 Dynavap fan? 🍃🍃🍃

I’ll try to address some of this, as I’m able. 🙂

1. Yes, many many milks, we can’t agree on what is best. Personally I like a quality almond milk, for its nutrients & no sugars and huge bonus it’s shelf stable. Great for emergencies.

2. I think the dearth of fresh produce is related to Americans not doing a lot of cooking. Most Americans have a simpler diet, and the stores need to concentrate on a number of things they know will sell. Baby carrots are actually awesome, you’re going to appreciate this – IIRC baby carrots are an innovative way to reduce food waste, sell crop. A farmer had ugly, misshapen, perhaps slightly molded or otherwise undesirable carrots. But most of it was good! So they cut off the bad parts & whittle it down to a nice, uniform, attractive shape & size. Baby carrots were born! Kids like them, they’re ‘snackable’…idk, I like them & I like the green effort.

3. Yes, food dyes are thrown into everything. RFK recently did a little rant about the yellow dye, some coal runoff chemical. He’s absolutely right, it’s not cool. I always say you go back 200 years & some people were starving, food of any kind was great. Now we throw red dye into ketchup solely because the ketchup isn’t red enough. Disgusting.

4. Natural eggs have some waxy layer on it, a protective layer. So your eggs look dirtier but are actually healthier, can withstand low/no refrigeration. IIRC. Our eggs have that layer removed, they’re required by law to be ‘washed’. Yes, I also think it’s bullshit.

5. It is definitely the sugar & preservatives.

6. As our bellies have grown, so has everything else. If you find old houses with old cabinets & old plates, you’ll find the dinner plates are much smaller than we have today! We have been programmed to consume. Search ‘dinner plates have gotten bigger’ and read for yourself.

7. Yes, our police forces get down to counties. Towns. Idk, I would say that this should provide a more personal & immediate presence. Also in the American spirit, keeping these matters fractured & separate (but also working together, and deferring to increasing levels of authority as needed) allows for the most freedom. You don’t like how things are run in this town? Well move to another one. Same with the states. I see people moving towns because they want a better school for their kids. It allows for choice.

8. Yeah, pretty much. TBF, though, our brains can only process so much. And what can we do about the European stuff, anyway?? We’ve got our jobs, maybe our families, our homes, 334M fucking people of our own with various beliefs scattered across 50 diverse states, heavy taxation without representation (hint, hint), our own problems…then somebody comes up to you…“Did you hear what happened in Fuckistan this morning? 🥺” NO! 😂🙃

Thankfully, with the internet, we can look into any world events we want to & educate ourselves that way. I do, I am politically more involved than most. But no, I cannot name current ministers, chancellors, presidents… I hear their position & that’s enough for me. Not my monkeys, not my circus, you handle yours & I’ll handle mine.

12 . Thanks! I think at heart we’re very cordial people generally speaking. But onto that second, contradictory part: I absolutely agree. I live in a generally good area, but I also see a lot of…other…people. There’s a saying, people were a lot more polite & considerate when duelling was legal. Looking around, I think things have become far too ‘civilized’, the people too soft & dumb, our food as you’ve pointed out is poisoned, mental & physical illnesses abound, the people haven’t seen real hard times, there is no clear & present danger to unite & fight so they make up stupid things to get offended by & fight each other, they’re protected from the natural consequences of their actions…I see it. Often. This & more culminates in disrespect & disconnects. Unlike other nations, partly because of our freedoms & partially because our legal system lacks balls, we tolerate a lot of bullshit behavior. As they say, if you tolerate something, expect more of it.

Butyric acid!

Who made the original comic? I’ve seen it before, this one’s funny, I want to know.

Unattended & engine running in a bad town, bad part of town.

I’m going to keep an open mind, but I haven’t seen much positive about Sony & Motorola smartphones. Haven’t even looked at them for probably 10 years.

A big thing that kept me away from them, aside from their reputation for lackluster/poor performance, was the lack of root/ROMs.

But I’ve gotten older. Specific root benefits have become much fewer, punishments for rooting are more common, well maintained custom ROMs just aren’t a thing (and for what phone?). So all of the rules have changed on me…and maybe it’s time to take another look at Sony, Motorola. 🙂 Do you have any specific recommendations?

I want USB-C, I mean they all should be. I want microSD expandable storage. I’d sure like an aux port but I can go without.

I mean technically smartphones. I have watched the smartphone world start, and BLOSSOM, and now we’re certainly seeing some enshittification here & there but I have started to fully embrace the budget Samsung phones. Knowing that except for the insulting, glaringly bad exception that is battery life, it is better than the SGS3 of old I had in almost every other way.

I really appreciate LED lights. They used to be so expensive, and yet so basic!! $10/bulb, back when the USD was worth even half a damn, and quality? Ehhh you buy what we have, go fuck yourself. Now… I can buy a pack of quality LED bulbs where I can shift the tone/shade on each one via toggle switch, an 18-pk is $37? A little over $2/bulb?? 😌 Very, very cool

I just picked up TWO solar panel, rechargeable, D-Cell battery Duracell LED lanterns for $16 each (Costco). USB-C cable included. They can also be use to charge small electronics. Pretty nifty, and for not much money at all! You couldn’t get that 10 years ago.

Security cams & recordings, obviously there’s also a massive uptick in abuse/deception/people being shitheads. Comes with the territory. But take the shitty people out of the equation & objectively speaking, picture/video/audio quality is soooooooo much better. And digital storage has never been cheaper! So many good options! I saw a $30 security camera you can stick on your WiFi smart garage door opener. Again, looks pretty slick & it costs just a little more than eating out at a nice restaurant. Crazy.

CNC milling & creating art, structures, whatever with lasers & machines is fucking amazing & getting better, more advanced with each passing day. We can mill pieces to screw or friction fit…precisely…together. It’s so simple but I’m telling you guys, this is going to lead to a lot of really cool stuff! And some scary stuff. But again, comes with the territory.

Very even-handed. I agree, but it’s in the same vein. It’s similar enough. I like to bolster my arguments with such facts & events, and I’ll inevitably find some person who will say, “I never knew that…”

We need knowledge baked into our collective consciousness, and we need to know how to find solutions. The problem once again comes down to people, and lying. Nothing is new under the sun. How do we discern the truth?

Of course the complaints sound legitimate. And idk I am inclined to side with them, if they’re honest & the complaints are based on fact.

With their commercial launch fast approaching, the parties also expressed an expectation that competitors would continue to make misleading claims and draconian demands to further delay Commission action and limit service to American consumers. Indeed, each time that SpaceX has demonstrated that it would not cause harmful interference to other operators—often based on those parties’ own claimed assumptions—those competitors have moved the goalposts or have claimed their analysis should not have been trusted in the first place. These operators’ shapeshifting arguments and demands should be seen for what they are: last-minute attempts to block a more advanced supplemental coverage partnership and siphon sensitive information to aid their own competing efforts. The Commission must not allow competitive gamesmanship to stand in the way of lifesaving service for American consumers.

I have seen a lot of this in my life, too. AT&T is a shitty company. Verizon is very good generally speaking, but overpriced. Some of you might not be old enough to remember, but SMS texting started out being sent over a never used emergency reserve 5% partition of cell towers. They were charging us all $10+/mo for something that cost them virtually nothing. All that to say, I don’t fucking trust AT&T, Verizon, or TMobile. ¯\(°_o)/¯ Do you??? Any of them will do anything to make a buck, and as SpaceX says, any one of them will say anything to sandbag their competition (while trying to copy ideas & build their own version). These cell phone companies are the worst of all; they’ve been allowed to lie, cheat, and steal for decades. Their claims don’t have to be true, they just have to “sound legitimate”.

I’m thinking…this is all about a signal. A signal that can be turned on & off, a signal that doesn’t physically harm any equipment but might hamper their ability to send & receive their own signal. Both sides are making radically different claims, maybe there’s a little truth to both, but one has to be significantly closer to right than the other.

In theory, blind tests could be performed without informing AT&T/Verizon. Or hell even the FCC, but it is unwise to piss off the US Gov’t Alphabet Gang. If there is this terrible interference, alright. We should be able to notice that, and quickly. Shut it down, turn the signals off. If it’s done and SpaceX, TMobile are correct & there is no discernible interference, this is where things could get really delicious. You just let it go for 6 months or a year. 🙂 Then you announce a testing date, they kick & scream per usual, it goes through… and then if they start saying “oH My GOd, ouR NetWErkz R goING CRazY becAUSe of this signal, that started on this date.” Yeah, and everything was fine before? 🤔 Oh man, we were great & everything was great, no problems before this date. Well guess what, you dumb bitch??? We’ve been using this signal for 6+ months before the test date. That means you’re lying.

Anyway. I know it’ll probably never happen, even if it should. I’ve watched these people lie to us, spend money & effort tearing down their competition or fighting common fucking sense. Like Apple refusing to switch iPhones to USB-C, when they themselves were using USB-C on their Macbooks & iPads for years at that point. I don’t think it is an exaggeration when I say these people are hampering progress, innovation, and getting in the way of us enjoying a better world. They hamstring mankind, they hold back the greatness & potential of society. It’s high time we identify, label these people as such & treat them accordingly.

Turn the damn satellite signals on. Do some testing. See. What. Happens.

Who knows how many are active, but yeah it’s really bad. I’ll be power scrolling All for random porn (I see something blurred out), I click on it, oh fuck, my eyes. Lol

Some of these names, too. It makes me laugh. “Welcome to… Gay Fisting”. 😆

Holy shit, do I have a fucking list. 🙄🙄🙄🙄

I see it, I block it, boy oh boy do I have a list

!

OP sjmarf, I tried to feel you out a bit, hard to get a read on your age based on your comment history. But I gather you live in the UK. Idk if you’ve always lived there, or immigrated.

I was a younger American at the time of 2009 Inauguration, but I can tell you the general feeling in the air that day: fucking excitement. It was truly electric; whether you were for or against Obama, you’re just kind of forced to take a few steps back & go… Wow. America has officially elected a black President. It was unprecedented, it was almost kind of strange because you’ve got people always screaming about how racist America can be. But there we were. Obama was handsome. Charismatic. Hell, if I were in town, I probably would have been there, too. Just for the sheer spectacle of it all & witnessing history unfold.

Going from that to another white (/orange) man taking the office, kinda old hat, kinda business as usual. I’m telling you, there’s simply no honest way to compare the two events.

I also want to take a moment & say thank you for your content creation & possibly upkeep on the Lemmy platform. I had to filter out your posts, there’s so much material you’ve contributed. Thanks. 👍🏻

…Oh, no! Anyway. Just giving people one more reason to finally make the switch to Firefox or something different.

Google Chrome warns about disabling uBlock Origin. I warn Google Chrome that they’re being a little bitch & they’re going to lose users.

I have seen just lots of trash, but honestly I’m not one to talk… I’ve seen house numbers hidden from view by decorations, often wreaths. Basically: Merry Christmas! Go fuck yourself.

There was one lady that had probably a hundred+ boxes on her front porch, stuff gets ordered & apparently never taken in. Old, molded boxes. You just add to the pile & walk away.

Rumble/Locals

There are so many out in the wild, I bet you could pick up a used Brother laser printer off FB Marketplace. As many others have said…any one will do. I also have one, they’re great.