The weird thing about this claim is that these aren’t deal breakers. It’s possible to get insurance for exotics like McLaren or Bugatti (although no idea if GEICO does those); it just costs a lot.

I’d really like to hear more about those underwriting standards.

I once heard it described as a “3 day relationship between a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old that left 6 people dead”

Presumably, “other places” refers to other insurance companies. IOW, GEICO is (allegedly) denying them coverage. OP is hoping that Allstate, Progressive, etc will also deny coverage.

My point is that every company is a tech company.

It’s easy to think of tech as being companies that primarily produce electronics or operate information services, but that’s not the case. Every company uses (and often creates) technology in various forms that benefit from standards and interoperation.

Connected devices benefit from standardized Wi-Fi. Cars benefit from standardized fuel- both in ICE (octane ratings, pumps) and electric (charging connectors, protocols). It even applies to companies that make simple molded plastic, because the molds can be created/used at many factories, including short-term contract manufacturing.

It’s very much the Oracle model.

A long time ago, Oracle DB could handle workloads much, much larger than any of their competitors. If you needed Oracle, none of the others were even a possibility. There are even tales that it was a point of pride for some execs.

Then Oracle decided to put the screws to their customers. Since they had no competition, and their customers had deep pockets (otherwise they wouldn’t have had such large databases), they could gouge all they wanted. They even got new customers, because they had no competition.

Fast forward and there are now a number of meaningful competitors. But it’s not easy to switch to a different DB software, and there are a ton of experienced Oracle devs/DBAs out there. There are very few new projects built using Oracle, but the existing ones will live forever (think COBOL) and keep sucking down licensing fees.

VMware thinks they are similarly entrenched, and in some cases they’re right. But it’s not the simple hypervisor that everyone is talking about. That can easily be replaced by a dozen alternatives at the next refresh. Instead it’s the extended stack, the APIs and whatnot, that will require significant development work to switch to a new system.

Not just VPN, but geolocation in general. I am in Ohio, but I am often geolocated as being in Chicago due to my ISP. Similar for mobile.

The comments are all assuming that it’s the same people that are viewing this content and promoting hatred. It may not be - even the reddest areas still have 30%+ blue voters (and vice-versa). Although the implications of that would be equally noteworthy and confusing.

All of the consumer lines are pretty bad these days. Acer has a reputation for being unreliable (backed by some data from SquareTrade ~10 years ago). HP is just as bad, in mostly the same ways, but has avoided the reputation.

Reliable laptops are the enterprise lines - Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elite Book, and Lenovo Thinkpad. But they are significantly more expensive when buying new.

Often there are contracts. Sometimes for a very long time, often multi-year. There are sometimes escape clauses (like a morality clause for a spokesperson), but these aren’t easy to invoke.

I suspect many of them are up for annual review/renewal, when they can be terminated without penalty. It might also just be an attempt to get better terms.

Shrinkflation is smaller quantities and/or higher prices. This is actually tracked in a variety of places.

Changing to a cheaper recipe/supplier is very hard to put metrics on, and isn’t tracked anywhere that I know of

Uber’s insurance is pretty bad. Many get the additional coverage from their regular insurer anyway because of this. That coverage also (usually) applies to this situation as well.

How close are these surrounding towns? What’s the population, particularly for the demographics you would appeal to?

Often, it’s not worthwhile to bring your favorite culture to your home. Just go to the culture where it already exists. Often, these quiet, boring places are populated by people that WANT to live in a place that’s quiet and boring. It doesn’t make much sense for anyone to move there if they don’t.

If the locals - as a whole, not just some prominent extremists - dislike Starbucks being there, then the location will fail.

You’re absolutely right. Such procedures should be treated the same, as much as is appropriate. (vasectomies are a much more minor procedure, so things like recovery support would be different)

If their beliefs get in the way, they need to find another profession. This is pretty well established across the entire industry.

You must provide the same level of care for a pregnant teen, a smoker dying of lung cancer, or a neo Nazi. It doesn’t matter how their lifestyle offends you.

You seem to have misinterpreted my posts. Informed decisions are ok, but someone else making that decision is not. It’s not sexist, because it works exactly the same if the roles are reversed.

How so? If I were considering a vasectomy, I would expect to be told that it may be an issue for my future wife. I would take issue if I were told that such a decision should be left to her, and not mine to make.

The headline kinda buries the lede. From the article, “(the) gynecologist told her the choice should be up to her future husband”.

A discussion about potential regrets is a lot more benign than denying her autonomy.

“handle” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. The signs are already there that all of these edge cases will just be programmed as “safely pull over and stop until conditions change or a human takes control”. Which isn’t a small task in itself, but it’s a lot easier than figuring out to continue (e.g.) on ice.